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MARCUS  ALONZO  HANNA 


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TORONTO 


MR.  HANNA  IN  1903 


MARCUS  ALONZO  HANNA 

HIS  LIFE  AND  WORK 


BY 

HERBERT  CROLY 


Nefo  fforfc 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1912 

All  rights  reserved 


L1BKAK  i 


COPYRIGHT,  1912, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  April,  1912. 


Nortoooti 
J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


PREFACE 

THE  preparation  of  the  material  upon  which  the  following 
account  of  Marcus  Alonzo  H anna's  life  and  work  is  based  was 
attended  with  many  difficulties.  No  political  leader  of  similar 
prominence  in  modern  times  has  left  such  a  slim  public  record  of 
his  characteristic  achievements.  He  began  his  career  as  a  politi- 
cal manager  whose  work  consisted,  not  in  the  advocacy  of  legis- 
lative policies  or  in  acts  of  public  administration,  but  in  political 
planning  and  negotiation,  which  only  incidentally  became  a  matter 
of  public  record.  Throughout  his  career  this  aspect  of  his  work 
remained  of  decisive  importance.  To  give  a  full  and  accurate 
account  of  such  plans  and  negotiations  is  almost  an  impossibility, 
and  it  is  impossible,  not  merely  because  many  of  these  negotia- 
tions were  essentially  confidential,  but  because  subsequent  ac- 
counts of  them,  even  when  given  in  good  faith,  can  scarcely 
avoid  some  inaccuracy  and  partiality.  Mr.  Hanna's  correspond- 
ence also  throws  comparatively  little  light  upon  the  critical 
decisions  and  moments  of  his  career.  The  really  decisive  nego- 
tiations were  never  committed  to  paper,  and  Mr.  Hanna  did  not 
keep  copies  of  many  of  the  most  important  letters  which  he 
wrote  and  received. 

In  order  to  supplement  the  necessary  scarcity  of  documentary 
material  bearing  on  Mr.  Hanna's  life  and  work,  all  of  his  political 
and  business  associates  were  asked  to  contribute  full  and  careful 
statements  covering  those  phases  of  his  career  with  which  they 
were  familiar.  The  task  of  taking  these  statements  was  confided 
to  Mr.  James  B.  Morrow,  who  had  been  for  many  years  editor  of 
the  Cleveland  Leader,  and  who  brought  to  the  work  unusually 
high  qualifications.  Not  only  had  he  long  been  personally  ac- 
quainted with  Mr.  Hanna  and  familiar  with  the  unwritten 
political  history  of  the  period,  but  he  had  an  unusually  accurate 
knowledge  of  the  complications  and  personalities  of  Ohio  politics. 
In  taking  the  statements  of  Mr.  Hanna's  friends  and  associates, 
he  was  met  for  the  most  part  with  a  very  cordial  desire  to  coop- 


VI  PREFACE 

erate.  There  were  not  more  than  two  or  three  men  who  might 
have  contributed  anything  essential  to  our  knowledge  of  Mr. 
Hanna's  life  who  refused  or  neglected  to  add  their  testimony. 
Besides  taking  these  personal  statements,  Mr.  Morrow  also  made 
an  exhaustive  collection  of  all  the  available  documents  and  public 
records  which  would  throw  light  upon  any  aspect  of  Mr.  Hanna's 
life  and  work.  The  material  so  collected  was  placed  in  my 
hands,  and  has  been  worked  over  into  a  consecutive  account  of 
Mr.  Hanna's  career.  Wherever  it  seemed  necessary,  I  have  sup- 
plemented and  confirmed  the  material  furnished  by  Mr.  Morrow, 
but  by  far  the  most  important  part  of  the  preparatory  division  of 
the  work  was  done  by  him  and  done  conscientiously,  intelligently 
and  impartially.  Although  Mr.  Morrow  is  not  responsible  for  a 
word  of  the  text,  he  has,  in  a  very  real  sense,  collaborated  in  the 
preparation  of  this  biography.  His  contribution  to  it  has  been 
indispensable  and  invaluable. 


CONTENTS 

PAGK 
CHAPTER  -. 

I.  BIRTHPLACE,  PARENTAGE  AND  FAMILY  .... 

II.  BENJAMIN  HANNA,  HIS  FAMILY  AND  HIS  FORTUNE       .        8 

III.  BOYHOOD     .        »        •        • 

IV.  THE  PASSING  OF  NEW  LISBON         •        •        •        •        .28 
V.  EARLY  YEARS  IN  CLEVELAND  .        .        .        •        •        .36 

VI.    MARRIAGE  AND  ITS  RESULTS    ...        •        •        •      47 
VII.     BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  CLEVELAND         •»..      .       V       •        •      54 


ERRATA 

Page  112,  line  16,  for  James  B.  Foraker  read  Joseph  B.  Foraker 

Page  139,  line  10,  for  James  B.  Foraker  read  Joseph  B.  Foraker 

Page  141,  line  11,  for  James  B.  Foraker  read  Joseph  B.  Foraker 

Page   191,   line  6,  for  James  B.  Foraker  read  Joseph  B.  Foraker 


XV.    THE  CONVENTION  OF  1896        .  .  .  ...  190 

XVI.    THE  CAMPAIGN  OF  1896    .        .  *  •  •  .  .  209 

XVII.    SENATOR  BY  APPOINTMENT       .  .   .  •  •  •  •  228 

XVIII.    SENATOR  BY  ELECTION      .        .  .  •  •  •  •  242 

XIX.    THREE  YEARS  OF  TRANSITION  .  •  »  •  •  272 

XX.    THE  CONVENTION  OF  1900        .  .  .  *  *  •  302 

XXI.     THE  CAMPAIGN  OF  1900    .        .  .  .  H^  •  •  319 

XXII.     SHIP  SUBSIDIES  .        .        •        •  .  .  *,  •  •  342 

XXIII.     THE  DEATH  OF  PRESIDENT  McKiNLEY  .  .  .  •  355 

vii 


VI  PREFACE 

erate.  There  were  not  more  than  two  or  three  men  who  might 
have  contributed  anything  essential  to  our  knowledge  of  Mr. 
Hanna's  life  who  refused  or  neglected  to  add  their  testimony. 
Besides  taking  these  personal  statements,  Mr.  Morrow  also  made 
an  exhaustive  collection  of  all  the  available  documents  and  public 
records  which  would  throw  light  upon  any  aspect  of  Mr.  Hanna's 
life  and  work.  The  material  so  collected  was  placed  in  my 
hands,  and  has  been  worked  over  into  a  consecutive  account  of 
Mr.  Hanna's  career.  Wherever  it  seemed  necessary,  I  have  sup- 
plemented and  confirmed  the  material  furnished  by  Mr.  Morrow, 
but  by  far  the  most  important  part  of  the  preparatory  division  of 
the  work  was  done  by  him  and  done  conscientiously,  intelligently 
and  impartially.  Although  Mr.  Morrow  is  not  responsible  for  a 
word  of  the  text,  he  has,  in  a  very  real  sense,  collaborated  in  the 
preparation  of  this  biography.  His  contribution  to  it  has  been 
indispensable  and  invaluable. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  BIRTHPLACE,  PARENTAGE  AND  FAMILY  ....  1 

II.  BENJAMIN  HANNA,  HIS  FAMILY  AND  HIS  FORTUNE  .  8 

III.  BOYHOOD     .       .»       . 17 

IV.  THE  PASSING  OF  NEW  LISBON 28 

V.  EARLY  YEARS  IN  CLEVELAND 36 

VI.  MARRIAGE  AND  ITS  RESULTS    .        .        ...  .47 

VII.  BUSINESS  LIFE  IN  CLEVELAND         ,       v       .        .  •  54 

VIII.  MISCELLANEOUS  BUSINESS  INTERESTS     .        .        .  .  65 

IX.  MARK  HANNA  AND  HIS  EMPLOYEES         .        .        .  .  84 

X.  CHARACTERISTICS  IN  BUSINESS                 •        •        •  •  96 

XI.  BEGINNINGS  IN  POLITICS  .        .        .        •        .        *  •  110 

XII.  Two  CONVENTIONS  AND  THEIR  RESULTS         .        .  .120 

XIII.  POLITICAL  FRIENDS  AND  ENEMIES  .        .        .        .  .  140 

XIV.  THE  MAKING  OF  A  PRESIDENT         .        .        .        .  •  164 
XV.  THE  CONVENTION  OF  1896        .        .        ,        *       .  .190 

XVI.  THE  CAMPAIGN  OF  1896    .        .        .        .        .        .  .  209 

XVII.  SENATOR  BY  APPOINTMENT       .        .        .        .        .  .  228 

XVIII.  SENATOR  BY  ELECTION      •        •        •     .   .        •        •  •  242 

XIX.  THREE  YEARS  OF  TRANSITION         .        •       »        •  .  272 

XX.  THE  CONVENTION  OF  1900        .        ,        .       >        ,  .  302 

XXI.  THE  CAMPAIGN  OF  1900    .        *        •   j    •     |>*        •  .319 

XXII.  SHIP  SUBSIDIES  .        .        .        .        .        .    v   *        •  '.  342 

XXIII.  THE  DEATH  OF  PRESIDENT  McKiNLEY  .        .        .  .  355 

vii 


Vlll  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XXIV.     THE  PANAMA  CANAL .369 

XXV.  THE  Civic  FEDERATION  AND  THE  LABOR  PROBLEM  .  386 

XXVI.  THE     CAMPAIGN    OF   1903   AND    THE    PRESIDENTIAL 

NOMINATION         .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .  411 

XXVII.  THE  DEATH  OF  MARK  HANNA     .        .        .        .        .  447 

XXVIII.  CONCLUSION     .       .       .                                              ,  465 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

Mr.  Hanna  in  1903 Frontispiece 

FACING  PAGE 

The  House  in  New  Lisbon  in  which  Mr.  Hanna  was  born.    It  has 

been  changed  by  the  addition  of  one  story          ....  8 

The  New  Lisbon  Homestead 18 

Mark  and  Howard  Melville  Hanna  as  Children         ....  22 

Mark  Hanna  as  a  Boy 24 

The  Prospect  Street  Homestead  in  Cleveland 36 

Mark  Hanna  as  a  Lad  of  Eighteen 38 

Mark  Hanna  in  1864 48 

Mark  Hanna  about  1871 56 

Mark  Hanna  about  1877 112 

Mr.  Hanna  in  the  Early  Nineties 150 

Mr.  Hanna  in  1901 344 

Facsimile  of  the  Letter  written  by  Mr.    Hanna  during  his  Final 

Illness  to  President  Roosevelt     .        .        .        .        .        .        .  452 


INTRODUCTION 

BEFORE  beginning  the  story  of  Mark  Hanna's  life  and  work  I 
want  to  claim  the  unprejudiced  attention,  even  of  those  readers 
who  may  be  predisposed  against  him.  His  personality  and  his 
career  are  entitled  to  the  fair  and  serious  consideration  of  his 
opponents  in  politics  and  economics.  They  have  a  value  apart 
from  and  beyond  the  controversies  in  which  they  were  entangled 
during  his  own  life,  and  in  which,  from  the  point  of  view  of  many 
Americans,  they  are  still  entangled.  I  do  not  underemphasize 
the  difficulties  of  giving  a  fair  account  of  Mr.  Hanna's  life  or  of 
passing  a  disinterested  judgment  on  a  man  whose  public  action 
involved  so  much  bitter  contention  and  who  so  recently  died. 
Grave  as  those  difficulties  may,  be,  this  book  is  an  attempt  to 
overcome  them.  It  must  stand  or  fall  on  the  attempt. 

Like  all  strong  and  capable  men  who  fight  hard  for  their  own 
political  purposes  and  opinions,  Mr.  Hanna  made  many  friends 
and  many  enemies.  He  was  loved  and  trusted  by  his  friends 
as  have  been  very  few  American  political  leaders.  He  was 
abused  and  distrusted  by  his  enemies  with  no  less  ardor.  At 
the  outset  of  his  public  career  the  varying  estimates  of  him  as  a 
man  were  determined  chiefly  by  the  judgments  passed  upon 
his  political  purposes  and  methods.  For  years  he  could  not 
obtain  an  unprejudiced  hearing,  unless  it  were  from  his  politi- 
cal allies.  He  was  denounced  as  the  living  embodiment  of  a 
greedy,  brutalized  and  remorseless  plutocracy;  and  this  de- 
nunciation infected  the  opinion  of  many  members  of  his  own 
party  who  had  no  knowledge  of  the  man.  Gradually,  however, 
the  public  estimate  of  him  improved.  As  his  personality  be- 
came better  known,  and  as  his  political  opinions  became  more 
fully  expressed,  the  popular  caricature  of  Mark  Hanna  began 
to  fade  from  the  public  mind.  The  fair-dealing  character- 
istic of  his  own  attitude  towards  other  men  aroused  a  corre- 
sponding attitude  towards  him  on  the  part  of  a  large  part  of  the 

xi 


Xli  INTRODUCTION 

public.  The  man  himself  began  to  obtain  tributes  of  personal 
appreciation  even  from  his  enemies. 

Since  his  death  the  favorable  impression  made  by  his  per- 
sonality has  been  partly  forgotteil  —  except,  of  course,  by  his 
friends  and  associates.  But  the  enmities  created  during  his 
career  have  been  kept  alive  by  the  course  of  political  contro- 
versy. Many  reformers  identify  Mr.  Hanna  with  everything 
which  they  most  dislike  in  the  old  political  and  economic  order ; 
and  reformers,  of  course,  have  a  license  to  consider  the  men  and 
things  which  they  dislike  as  morally  reprobate.  The  early 
caricature  of  Mark  Hanna  is  reappearing.  He  is  not  figured  in 
the  newspapers  as  a  dollar-mark:  but  he  is  described  in  the 
pages  of  books  and  magazine  articles  as  the  anti-Christ  of  the 
new  political  religion.  He  is  ceasing  to  be  remembered  as  a 
man,  and  is  becoming  a  legendary  Apotheosis  of  Property  in 
its  antagonism  to  Humanity. 

I  shall  try  in  the  following  pages  to  bring  the  real  Mark  Hanna 
back  to  life.  He  cannot  be  converted  into  a  symbol  without 
essential  distortion.  Men  of  a  drier  and  more  rigid  disposition, 
who  have  been  molded  by  some  special  intellectual  or  practical 
discipline,  may  become  sufficiently  disembodied  to  qualify  as  a 
symbol ;  but  Mark  Hanna's  clothes  covered  an  unusually  large 
supply  of  human  nature,  which  was  never  forced  into  any  special 
mold  by  an  artificial  discipline.  He  was  formed  under  the  same 
influences  as  hundreds  of  other  men  in  the  Middle  West  who 
combined  a  business  with  a  political  career.  He  was  the  same 
kind  of  a  man  as  the  rest  of  them ;  but  he  was  more  of  a  man. 
He  lived  the  kind  of  life  that  they  lived  more  energetically, 
more  sincerely  and  more  successfully.  If  he  achieved  anything 
more  than  they  achieved,  or  represented  anything  more  than 
they  represented,  the  difference  was  simply  a  matter  of  per- 
sonal prerogative. 

The  man  did  not  impose  himself  on  his  surroundings  or  mis- 
represent them.  His  opinions  were  the  reflection  of  his  experi- 
ence. His  system  was  the  outcome  of  his  life.  The  system 
was,  to  be  sure,  largely  preoccupied  with  the  purpose  of  pro- 
tecting property  and  promoting  its  increase  —  as  have  been  all 
political  systems  since  the  dawn  of  civilization.  But  he  did  not 
conceive  property  apart  from  humanity.  He  conceived  it  in  a 


INTRODUCTION  Xlll 

certain  traditional  relation  to  humanity,  and  he  regarded  the 
rights  of  property,  not  as  separate  from  human  rights,  but  simply 
as  one  class  of  human  rights  —  which  they  are.  He  deserves, 
consequently,  to  be  considered  primarily  as  a  man,  whose  man- 
hood conquered  appreciation  when  it  had  a  chance,  and  which 
should  continue  after  death  to  conquer  appreciation  from  other 
men  whose  critical  judgment  is  not  perverted  by  their  ideas. 
His  system  deserves  to  be  considered,  not  as  incarnate  plu- 
tocracy, but  as  the  product  of  these  conditions  from  which  Mark 
Hanna  himself  derived  it,  —  that  is,  from  the  actual,  political 
and  economic  tradition  and  practice  of  the  American  Middle 
West.  I  trust  that  the  reader  of  the  following  pages  will  ap- 
proach them  at  least  provisionally  with  these  ideas  in  mind. 


CHAPTER  I 

BIRTHPLACE,   PARENTAGE   AND   FAMILY 

MARCUS  ALONZO  HANNA  was  bom  on  September  24,  1837, 
in  the  town  of  New  Lisbon  'in  Ohio.  He  belongs,  consequently, 
to  Ohio's  second  or  third  generation  —  to  the  generation  which 
grew  up  before  the  end  of  the  pioneer  period,  but  after  the  edge 
had  been  rubbed  off  of  the  struggles  and  hardships  of  the  early 
settlers,  and  which  entered  into  a  comparatively  definite  and 
abundant  social  and  economic  heritage.  By  the  time  Mark 
Hanna  was  of  age  Ohio  had  already  become  Ohio.  It  was  no 
longer  a  wilderness.  It  was  a  settled  community  whose  life 
had  assumed  characteristics  different  from  those  of  other  neigh- 
boring communities,  and  was  offering  to  its  citizens  certain  pe- 
culiar business  and  political  opportunities.  In  1858  the  fact 
that  a  man  hailed  from  Ohio  did  almost  as  much  to  place  him 
as  the  fact  that  he  hailed  from  Massachusetts  or  Virginia.  The 
sons  of  Ohio  had  begun  to  be  molded  by  their  own  state  and 
had  begun  to  know  and  to  feel  for  their  political  mother. 

New  Lisbon  is  situated  in  a  county  on  the  eastern  border  of 
Ohio,  about  sixty  miles  from  Lake  Erie  —  a  county  which  en- 
joys the  peculiarly  American  name  of  Columbiana.  The  name 
was  derived  from  mixing  the  Columbus  of  history  with  the  ordi- 
nary Anna  of  domestic  life.  There  is  an  anecdote  that,  when  the 
adoption  of  the  name  was  pending  in  the  Legislature,  a  wag  sug- 
gested the  further  addition  of  Maria  —  thus  making  it  read 
Columbiana-Maria.  The  southeastern  end  of  the  county 
just  touches  the  Ohio  River,  near  the  bend  which  it  makes  in 
turning  east  towards  Pittsburgh ;  and  this  fact  had  an  important 
bearing  upon  the  fortunes  of  Mark  Hanna  and  of  his  family. 

The  village  of  New  Lisbon,  which  since  1895  has  been  called 
Lisbon,  was  founded  in  1803  by  Major  Lewis  Kinney.  It  grew 
so  rapidly  that  it  was  soon  selected  as  the  county  seat.  Immi- 
gration poured  in  from  Pennsylvania,  Maryland  and  Virginia, 

B  1 


2  MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS    LIFE   AND   WORK 

the  majority  of  the  newcomers  being  either  Scotch-Irish  Pres- 
byterians or  German  Lutherans,  with  now  and  then  an  adven- 
turous Swiss  mechanic.  From  the  beginning  industry  went 
hand  in  hand  with  farming.  A  powder-mill  and  two  tanner- 
ies were  started  almost  immediately,  a  wagon  shop  followed  in 
1807  and  a  tin-shop  in  1810.  As  early  as  1808  a  blast  furnace 
was  built  a  mile  from  New  Lisbon  by  Gideon  Hughes,  a  Quaker, 
who  named  it  Rebecca  in  honor  of  his  wife ;  and  to  the  Rebecca 
furnace  came  in  1809  as  a  skilled  workman  one  James  McKin- 
ley,  the  grandfather  of  William  McKinley.  James  McKinley 
had  migrated  from  Mercer  County,  Pennsylvania,  bringing  with 
him  a  wife  and  son  eighteen  months  old.  The  son,  whose  name  was 
William  McKinley,  was  married  in  New  Lisbon  to  Nancy  Camp- 
bell Allison ;  and  their  son  was  the  subsequent  President.  Will- 
iam McKinley  the  second  was,  however,  born  in  a  neighboring 
county,  to  which  his  parents  had  removed  after  the  extinction 
of  the  Rebecca  furnace. 

Some  five  years  after  James  McKinley  settled  in  New  Lis- 
bon, a  Scotch-Irish  Quaker  named  Benjamin  Hanna  moved 
into  the  town  and  opened  a  "general"  store.  Benjamin  was 
of  the  third  generation  of  Hannas  established  on  American  soil. 
His  grandparents,  Thomas  and  Elizabeth  Hanna,  had  emi- 
grated from  the  north  of  Ireland  in  1763.  The  former  is  sup- 
posed to  be  descended  from  a  Patrick  Hannay,  who  in  the  thir- 
teenth century  built  and  inhabited  a  house  called  "  Castle  Sorby" 
at  Galloway,  in  the  southern  part  of  Ayshire.  At  any  rate,  the 
Scots  who  were  planted  in  the  Irish  county  of  Ulster  during  the 
first  half  of  the  seventeenth  century  came  chiefly  from  this  part  of 
the  Scotch  Lowlands.  Among  the  children  accompanying  Thomas 
Hanna  was  one  Robert,  who  had  been  born  in  County  Mona- 
ghan,  Ireland,  in  1753.  The  family  settled  at  Buckingham  in 
Bucks  County,  Pennsylvania,  —  a  Quaker  neighborhood,  and 
there  Thomas  Hanna  died  within  a  year  of  his  arrival  in  the 
Promised  Land. 

Robert  Hanna  was  apprenticed  to  a  farmer  in  the  vicinity, 
and  worked  on  various  farms  thereabouts  until  he  became  of 
age.  In  1776  he  married  Catherine  Jones  in  the  adjoining 
county  of  Chester,  and  in  1779  he  and  his  wife  removed  to  Camp- 
bell County  in  Virginia.  There  in  cooperation  with  John  Lynch 


BIRTHPLACE,    PARENTAGE    AND   FAMILY  3 

he  laid  out  the  city  of  Lynchburg.  They  remained  in  Virginia 
some  twenty-two  years.  Before  leaving  Pennsylvania  they  had 
become  Quakers,  and  their  eight  children,  of  whom  Benjamin 
Hanna  was  the  second,  were  brought  up  in  that  faith.  In  1801 
Robert  Hanna,  his  wife  and  six  surviving  children  migrated  in  a 
"Conestoga"  wagon  to  the  township  of  Fairfield,  Columbiana 
County,  Ohio .  Later  he  moved  into  Middleton  township ,  founded 
the  village  of  Clarkson,  and,  it  is  said,  built  and  kept  a  log-tavern 
at  the  crossing  of  two  roads.  Here,  at  any  rate,  Robert  and 
Catherine  Hanna  lived  and  prospered  for  fourteen  years,  during 
which  time  their  children  were  marrying  and  dispersing. 

When  Benjamin  Hanna  settled  in  New  Lisbon  he  was  thirty- 
three  years  old  and  had  been  nine  years  married.  His  wife  was 
Rachel  Dixon  x  —  a  girl  of  eighteen  when  he  married  her,  and 
either  of  Dutch  or  English  descent.  Benjamin  had  passed 
through  a  good  deal  of  rough  frontier  discipline.  He  had  not 
shirked  the  hard  work  which  was  necessary  to  convert  a  wooded 
wilderness  into  a  cleared,  habitable  and  cultivated  country-side. 
He  had  taken  part  in  the  two  essential  preliminary  tasks  of  sur- 
veying the  land,  preparatory  to  its  alienation  to  individuals,  and 
of  clearing  it.  According  to  the  statement  of  his  son  Kersey, 
he  began  by  buying  for  $5  an  acre  forty  acres  of  forest  land 
situated  some  ten  miles  from  New  Lisbon.  After  clearing  his 
purchase,  he  sold  it  for  enough  money  to  buy  an  additional  one 
hundred  and  sixty  acres.  The  second  farm  was  situated  about 
half  a  mile  east  of  the  village  of  Columbiana,  and  like  the  first 

1  Joshua  Dixon  and  Dinah  Batten,  his  wife,  moved  into  Fairfield 
township,  Columbiana  County,  Ohio,  from  Fayette  County,  Pennsyl- 
vania, in  1802.  They  owned  two  sections  of  land,  1280  acres,  and 
became  sufficiently  well-to-do  to  substitute  a  brick  house  for  their 
first  log-cabin.  They  brought  with  them  to  Ohio  five  sons  and  six 
daughters,  one  of  each  being  the  fruit  of  a  former  marriage  of  Joshua 
Dixon.  Rachel,  the  wife  of  Benjamin  Hanna,  was  born  in  1785. 
The  Dixons  were  Quakers  as  well  as  the  Hannas,  and  the  marriage  was 
one  of  the  first  to  be  solemnized  in  Fairfield  township  according  to 
the  rites  of  the  sect.  Mr.  Kersey  Hanna,  the  youngest  of  Benjamin 
Hanna's  sons,  states  that  although  his  mother's  schooling  had  been  very 
limited,  she  was  very  quick  at  figures.  During  her  husband's  absence 
she  attended  to  the  store,  and  she  was  capable  of  waiting  on  ten  or 
twelve  customers  in  immediate  succession,  and  keeping  the  bills  of  each 
accurately  in  her  mind. 


4  MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

was  heavily  timbered.  He  started  in  to  clear  it,  but  by  the 
time  he  had  finished  thirty  or  forty  acres,  he  found  the  work  too 
much  for  him  and  his  health  temporarily  undermined.  He 
jumped  at  a  good  chance,  consequently,  of  adopting  some  less 
laborious  occupation.  The  country  had  been  so  far  opened  up 
that  commerce  had  begun.  In  1812  a  group  of  farmers  organ- 
ized a  company  for  the  purpose  of  opening  a  store  for  all  kinds 
of  merchandise  at  Salem,  ten  miles  north  of  New  Lisbon ;  and 
Benjamin  Hanna  was  selected  to  take  charge  of  it.  After 
managing  this  store  for  about  two  years,  he  sold  his  interest 
in  it  and  opened  a  store  of  his  own  in  New  Lisbon.  There  he 
lived  until  his  death  in  1853,  and  there  his  children  and  many 
of  his  children's  children  were  brought  up. 

To  Benjamin  and  Rachel  Hanna  were  born  thirteen  children, 
all  but  two  of  whom  survived  to  middle  age.1  One  of  them, 
Kersey  Hanna,  born  in  1824,  did  not  die  until  1909.  He  has 
contributed  many  interesting  reminiscences  to  the  following 
account  of  the  family's  life  in  New  Lisbon.  Among  other 
things  he  could  recollect  vividly  certain  journeys  which  he  used 
to  take  as  a  boy  of  twelve  with  his  grandfather,  Robert  Hanna. 
The  old  man  used  to  travel  around  from  the  house  of  one  of  his. 
children  to  that  of  another,  and  he  liked  to  have  the  boy  with 
him.  It  is  interesting  that  a  man  living  in  1909  should  remem- 
ber the  Scotch-Irish  immigrant  boy  who  came  to  the  colonies 
in  1763.  These  two  connecting  lives  bound  American  history 
from  the  agitation  for  the  repeal  of  the  stamp  act  to  the  admin- 
istration of  William  Howard  Taft. 

Of  Benjamin  and  Rachel  Raima's  eleven  children  who  sur- 
vived childhood,  seven  were  boys  and  four  were  girls.  They 

1  The  following  is  a  list  of  Benjamin  and  Rachel  Hanna's  children  : 
(1)  Joshua,  Nov.  8,  1804  —  died  July  7,  1881 ;  (2)  Leonard,  March 
4,  1806  — died  Dec.  15,  1862;  (3)  Levi,  Feb.  7,  1808  —  died 
May  5,  1898;  (4)  Zalinda,  Feb.  23,  1810  — died  Dec.  4,  1854; 
(5)  Robert,  Aug.  15,  1812  —  died  April  3,  1882 ;  (6  and  7)  Tryphena. 
and  Tryphosa,  twins,  June  12,  1814  —  died  May  23,  1893,  and  Jan. 
17,  1815;  (8)  Rebecca,  Sept.  21,  1816  —  died  Oct.  15,  1847; 
(9)  Thomas  B.,  May  22,  1818  —  died  Nov.  9,  1885  ;  (10)  Anna,  March 
3,  1821  —  died  Jan.  26,  1846 ;  (11)  Benjamin  J.,  March  14,  1823 
—  died  April  3,  1881;  (12)  Kersey,  Oct.  6,  1824  — died  1909;, 
(13)  Elizabeth,  June  12,  1827  —  died  Jan.  28,  1833. 


BIRTHPLACE,    PARENTAGE   AND   FAMILY  5 

were  a  fine,  tall,  vigorous  family.  The  shortest  of  the  brothers 
measured  five  feet  and  eleven  inches  in  height.  The  tallest 
measured  six  feet  three.  The  average  was  about  six  feet  — 
so  they  were  called  "forty-two  feet  of  Hanna."  As  they  grew 
up  some  of  the  children  deserted  their  home  for  one  cause  or 
another ;  but  the  majority  of  them  remained  with  their  father 
and  made  their  lives  in  New  Lisbon. 

All  the  children  except  one  were  educated  in  the  ordinary 
schools  of  New  Lisbon,  which  at  that  time  were  private  and 
according  to  all  accounts  most  inferior.  The  exception  was  Leon- 
ard, who  was  trained  for  a  professional  career.  After  getting 
what  preliminary  schooling  he  could  at  home,  he  was  sent  to  a 
small  college  in  the  neighboring  county  of  Washington  in 
Pennsylvania,  and  from  there  went  to  Philadelphia,  where  he 
graduated  from  the  Rush  Medical  College.  George  B.  McClel- 
land father  was  a  professor  in  the  institution  at  the  time  of 
Leonard  Hanna's  attendance.  He  returned  to  New  Lisbon  to 
practise  his  profession ;  but  his  career  as  a  physician  was  ham- 
pered and  curtailed  by  an  accident.  In  mounting  his  horse, 
preparatory  to  a  visit  to  one  of  his  patients,  he  had  barely 
thrown  his  leg  over  the  saddle,  when  the  animal  shied  and  he 
was  thrown  heavily  to  the  ground.  His  spine  was  injured  and 
thereafter  he  suffered  much  with  headaches,  the  attacks  some- 
times lasting  as  long  as  two  or  three  weeks.  The  injury  finally 
resulted  in  his  death  from  the  softening  of  the  brain.  Partly 
because  of  his  infirmity  he  ceased  the  practice  of  medicine  and 
joined  his  brothers  Joshua  and  Robert  in  helping  their  father 
in  the  conduct  of  a  continually  growing  business. 

It  must  have  been  shortly  after  his  accident  that  Dr.  Leon- 
ard Hanna  married;  and  as  one  of  the  best  educated  men  in 
the  town  he  not  unnaturally  married  a  school-teacher  —  Sa- 
mantha  Converse  by  name.  Her  parents,  Porter  and  Rhoda 
Howard  Converse,  had  migrated  from  Randolph,  Vermont,  to 
Ohio  in  1824.  Originally  the  Converse  family1  were  Huguenots, 
having  fled  to  Ireland  after  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew ; 
but  presumably  the  French  blood  had  been  tolerably  well  diluted 

1  There  is  a  history  of  the  Converse  family  by  Geo.  O.  Converse  of 
Columbus,  Ohio  —  at  one  time  a  Representative  in  Congress. 


6  MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

by  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Porter  Converse  had  been 
trained  as  a  lawyer,  but  became  a  merchant  after  moving  to 
Ohio.  His  wife,  Rhoda  Howard,  derived  from  an  old  and  excel- 
lent English  family,  and  is  stated  to  have  been  a  woman  of  great 
energy  of  purpose.  She  lived  to  be  eighty-seven  years  old. 
At  the  time  of  their  migration  they  had  four  children  —  three 
daughters  and  one  son.  A  fourth  daughter,  Miss  Helen  Con- 
verse, was  born  in  Ohio.  A  son  of  Caroline,  one  of  Samantha 
Converse's  sisters,  Porter  Harbaugh  by  name,  was  living  in 
1905  in  the  neighborhood  of  New  Lisbon.  According  to  his 
statement  his  mother  rode  all  the  way  from  Vermont  on  horse- 
back. The  switch  with  which  she  accelerated  the  animal's 
pace  was  planted  after  her  arrival  and  grew  to  be  a  large  tree. 
She  used  to  call  it  a  Vermont  white  plum.  Cuttings  were 
given  to  friends  and  neighbors  —  whereby  the  original  switch 
had  a  numerous  progeny  throughout  the  neighboring  part 
of  Ohio. 

One  cannot  help  suspecting  that  it  is  the  story  which  has 
grown  rather  than  the  switch ;  and  the  suspicion  is  partly  jus- 
tified by  Miss  Helen  Converse's  positive  statement  that  her 
family  migrated  to  Ohio  in  a  real  carriage  —  described  as  a  wide, 
old-fashioned  vehicle  on  springs.  It  would  accommodate  three 
people  comfortably  on  the  back  seat.  The  whole  family  rode 
all  day  in  their  conveyance,  usually  making  about  thirty  miles 
and  putting  up  every  night  at  inns.  Miss  Converse  had 
never  heard  of  the  fruitful  switch  —  which  none  the  less  may 
have  existed;  but  her  account  of  the  manner  of  her  family's 
migration  must  be  authentic.  The  Converses  possessed  means 
above  the  average  of  emigrants.  One  of  Mark  Hanna's  sis- 
ters, Mrs.  Jay  C.  Morse,  remembers  tales  of  her  mother's  about 
the  silver  tankards  and  plate  which  the  Howards  had  brought 
with  them  from  England. 

Vermont  has  been  said  to  be  the  most  glorious  spot  on  the 
face  of  the  globe  to  be  born  in,  provided  you  emigrate  when  you 
are  young.  Samantha  Converse  was  eleven  years  old  when  she 
arrived  in  Ohio.  Her  family,  coming  as  they  did  from  New 
England,  settled  in  Geauga  County  in  the  Western  Reserve. 
Miss  Converse  became  a  school  teacher,  and  went  to  New  Lis- 
bon for  the  purpose  of  using  her  knowledge  to  earn  her  living. 


BIRTHPLACE,    PARENTAGE   AND   FAMILY  7 

There  she  met  Dr.  Leonard  Hanna  and  married  him  on  Sept. 
10,  1835,  their  ages  being  respectively  twenty-nine  and  twenty- 
three.  Their  second  child  but  their  first  son,  born,  as  I  have 
said,  on  Sept.  24,  1837,  was  named  Marcus  Alonzo  Hanna. 

Such  was  Mark  Hanna's  ancestry,  of  which  any  American 
might  well  be  proud.  It  includes  a  compound  of  the  best  strains 
entering  into  the  American  racial  stock.  In  his  father's  blood 
there  was  a  Scotch-Irish,  a  Welsh  and  an  English  or  Dutch 
strain.  On  his  mother's  side  a  French  Huguenot,  an  Irish  and 
an  English  infusion  may  be  plainly  traced.  If  a  thorough  mix- 
ture of  many  good  racial  ingredients  constitutes,  as  is  now  usu- 
ally supposed,  an  heredity  favorable  to  individual  energy  and 
distinction,  Mark  Hanna  started  life  with  that  basic  advan- 
tage —  an  advantage  which  the  historians  of  the  state  like  to 
proclaim  is  enjoyed  by  an  unusual  proportion  of  the  old  fami- 
lies of  Ohio.  It  is  claimed  with  sufficient  plausibility  that  a 
peculiarly  fortunate  group  of  conditions  operated  to  select  as 
the  early  settlers  of  Ohio  the  very  best  elements  in  the  popula- 
tion of  the  older  states,  and  that  the  exceptional  prominence  of 
the  Ohio-born  in  American  political  and  economic  life  since  the 
Civil  War  must  be  attributed  to  this  excellence  of  stock.  Some 
foundation  of  truth  may  be  granted  to  this  explanation,  with- 
out making  Mark  Hanna  or  the  other  eminent  sons  of  Ohio 
any  less  individually  responsible  for  their  own  careers.  Peas- 
antry and  gentlefolk,  Scotch,  English,  Irish,  French  and  Dutch, 
New  England,  Pennsylvania  and  Virginia,  Calvinism  and  Qua- 
kerism, —  all  the  vague  influences  and  forces  associated  with 
these  names  entered  into  his  physical  and  social  inheritance. 
He  became  by  virtue  thereof  a  tolerably  typical  American  — 
which  means  a  man  whose  past  is  so  miscellaneous  that  he  is 
obliged  to  seek  for  himself  some  form  of  effective  personal 
definition. 


CHAPTER  II 

BENJAMIN   HANNA,   HIS   FAMILY  AND   HIS   FORTUNE 

THE  early  settlers  of  Columbiana  County  entered  into  a  nat- 
ural inheritance  as  rich  and  varied  as  their  own  blood.  Its 
situation  on  the  Ohio  River  adjoining  the  border  of  Pennsyl- 
vania was  favorable.  Its  natural  resources  were  abundant 
and  diversified.  The  northern  part  of  the  county  was  undulat- 
ing and  excellently  adapted  to  cultivation.  Its  southern  half 
was  more  rugged  and  broken,  and  was  on  the  whole  better 
adapted  for  grazing  than  for  tillage.  In  1840  it  stood  first 
among  the  counties  of  Ohio  in  the  production  of  wool.  Along 
the  bottom  lands  on  the  water  courses,  sycamore,  walnut, 
maple  and  chestnut  trees  flourished.  On  the  tops  of  the  hills 
grew  an  abundance  of  pine  and  spruce.  Coal,  iron  ore,  clay 
and  quarries  were  all  to  be  found  of  good  quality  and  quantity. 
In  short,  the  county  was  a  smaller  copy  of  the  whole  state  and 
afforded  the  best  of  opportunities  for  a  combined  agricultural 
and  industrial  development. 

New  Lisbon  was  located  in  the  southern  part  of  the  county 
in  the  township  of  Centre.  Its  site  consists  of  a  stretch  of  level 
or  bottom  land  running  east  and  west  on  the  middle  fork  of  the 
Little  Beaver  Creek.  To  the  north  is  a  long,  high  hill,  once 
crowned  with  a  deep  forest,  up  the  side  of  which  the  village 
gradually  spread.  West  and  south  of  the  village  there  stretches 
a  formidable  group  of  steep  hills,  the  summits  of  which  afford 
many  picturesque  views  of  a  broken  landscape.  The  hill  to 
the  south  is  particularly  precipitous,  and  from  the  abundance 
of  evergreens  on  its  sides,  used  to  be  known  as  Pine  Hill.  Its 
proximity  to  the  village,  its  rocks  and  its  woods  naturally 
made  it  the  favorite  playground  of  the  village  boys. 

When  Benjamin  Hanna  settled  in  New  Lisbon  in  1814  he 
leased  a  house  in  the  centre  of  the  village,  which  he  used  both  as  a 

8 


BENJAMIN   HANNA,   HIS   FAMILY  AND   HIS   FORTUNE       9 

store  and  as  a  residence.  He  did  not  in  the  beginning  depend 
for  his  subsistence  exclusively  upon  the  shop.  He  also  owned 
a  farm  on  the  hill  to  the  north  of  the  town,  but  in  all  probability 
the  shop  soon  came  to  occupy  all  his  time.  A  storekeeper  in  a 
village  in  the  interior  of  Ohio  in  the  year  1815  had  his  difficul- 
ties. Philadelphia  was  the  most  convenient  point  from  New 
Lisbon  for  the  purchase  of  stock  —  all  of  which  had  to  be  hauled 
the  length  of  the  state  of  Pennsylvania  over  barbarous  roads 
by  means  of  six-  and  eight-horse  teams.  The  transportation 
of  every  hundred  pounds  of  freight  in  this  laborious  fashion 
cost  the  merchant  between  $5  and  $10  —  the  average  rate 
being  about  $8.50 ;  and  it  was  probably  about  as  difficult  for 
a  man  to  finance  his  business  as  it  was  for  him  to  procure  his 
stock.  During  the  early  years  there  was  so  little  currency  in 
the  country  that  trade  was  usually  a  matter  of  barter,  and  if 
currency  was  used,  the  medium  of  exchange  was  generally 
deerskins. 

For  a  generation  and  more  the  economic  development  of  Ohio 
and  the  other  pioneer  states  was  at  first  hampered  and  then 
determined  in  its  form  and  distribution  by  the  available  means 
of  transportation.  Difficult  as  it  was  for  the  merchant,  the 
situation  of  the  farmer  was  worse.  His  bulky  products  could 
not  be  transported  to  market,  and  in  the  beginning  the  best 
that  he  could  do  was  to  feed  his  grain  to  stock  and  drive  the  ani- 
mals across  the  mountains  to  the  seaboard.  The  expense  of 
this  way  of  obtaining  some  purchasing  power  from  the  land  was 
too  great  to  endure.  The  roads  were  gradually  improved.  The 
flat  steamboat  made  transportation  by  the  Ohio  River  acces- 
sible to  many  counties  of  the  state.  Local  markets  of  some 
value  were  created.  Nevertheless,  these  improvements  af- 
fected different  parts  of  the  state  unevenly,  and  they  were  not 
sufficient  to  dispose  of  the  products  of  the  farms  without  occa- 
sional spells  of  ruinous  congestion  and  low  prices.  The  losses 
and  difficulties  from  which  so  many  of  the  pioneers  of  Ohio  suf- 
fered must  be  remembered  as  the  explanation  for  their  subse- 
quent craze  for  internal  improvements  and  the  large  amount  of 
money  wasted  therein.  The  business  life  of  a  storekeeper  like 
Benjamin  Hanna  was  one  long  fight,  first  against  the  expense 
and  delays  of  transportation,  and  then  against  the  relatively 


10         MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS    LIFE   AND   WORK 

better  means  of  transportation  which  other  parts  of  the  state 
had  obtained. 

In  the  end  he  was,  as  we  shall  see,  broken  by  the  struggle, 
but  he  had  nevertheless  a  long  preliminary  period  of  pros- 
perity. Steamboat  navigation  of  the  Ohio  River  eased  some 
of  his  difficulties,  and  the  construction  of  the  Cumberland  Road 
a  good  many  more.  New  Lisbon  itself  was  prosperous,  and  he 
benefited  from  the  increased  purchasing  and  selling  powers  of 
his  neighbors.  New  Lisbon  became,  indeed,  one  of  the  busiest 
and  most  popular  markets  in  eastern  Ohio.  Kersey  Hanna 
states  that  his  father  had  customers  who  travelled  fifty  or  sixty 
miles  to  do  business  at  the  store.  A  couple  of  much  frequented 
roads  crossed  the  village,  and  three  lines  of  stages  gathered  and 
distributed  passengers  from  every  direction.  A  newspaper  had 
been  started  in  German  as  early  as  1808,  but  later  it  was  trans- 
formed into  the  Ohio  Patriot,  and  under  that  name  still 
survives.  There  was  at  that  time  no  printing  establishment  in 
Cleveland,  and  legal  notices  were  for  a  while  sent  all  the  way  to 
New  Lisbon  for  publication  in  the  Patriot. 

Half  a  dozen  stray  bits  of  testimony  prove  both  the  increas- 
ing prosperity  of  Benjamin  Hanna  and  his  importance  among 
his  fellow-townsmen.  He  soon  dispensed  with  his  rented  house, 
and  built  for  himself  on  the  public  square  a  two-story  brick 
store  and  residence,  the  living  rooms  being  separated  from  the 
shop  only  by  a  partition.  Kersey  Hanna  was  born  in  this 
building  in  1824,  and  so  was  Mark  Hanna  thirteen  years  later. 
It  is  standing  to-day,  and  is  changed  only  by  the  addition  of 
another  story.  After  the  incorporation  of  the  village  by  a 
special  act  of  the  Legislature  in  1825  the  first  board  of  officers 
was  organized  on  May  10,  1826,  in  Benjamin  Hanna's  dwelling, 
and  he  was  chosen  to  be  one  of  the  trustees.  Joshua,  his  first 
son,  apparently  had  something  to  do  with  the  business.  At  all 
events,  he  made  a  trip  to  Philadelphia  in  1829,  presumably  to 
purchase  stock,  and  was  authorized  to  obtain  for  the  village  a 
hand  fire-engine.  Later,  when  again  in  Philadelphia,  he  bought 
for  $485.39  a  much  improved  machine,  and  on  his  way  back 
remained  in  Pittsburgh  long  enough  to  add  a  dozen  leather  fire 
buckets  to  the  equipment  of  the  town.  Finally,  when  the  Co- 
lumbiana  Bank  of  New  Lisbon  was  revived  in  1834  or  1835,  after 


BENJAMIN   HANNA,    HIS   FAMILY  AND   HIS   FORTUNE      11 

having  been  dormant  for  a  number  of  years,  both  Benjamin  and 
Joshua  Hanna  were  elected  directors.  Joshua  Hanna  was 
also  director  of  the  Columbiana  Mutual  Insurance  Company  of 
New  Lisbon,  while  at  a  somewhat  later  date,  another  brother, 
Robert  Hanna,  became  president  of  the  association. 

These  sufficiently  petty  details  are  worth  mentioning,  because 
they  establish  the  position  occupied  by  Benjamin  Hanna  and 
his  sons  in  New  Lisbon  at  the  time  of  Mark  Hanna's  birth  and 
boyhood.  They  had  become  one  of  the  leading  families  of  the 
town,  and  local  capitalists  of  unimpeachable  standing.  Ben- 
jamin Hanna  himself  did  not  continue  to  live  back  of  the  store. 
He  bought  and  inhabited  still  another  farm  on  the  edge  of  the 
town.  Joshua,  the  eldest  son,  built  for  his  own  occupancy  a 
fine  brick  house  on  the  brow  of  the  hill  overlooking  the  valley. 
Leonard  Hanna,  also,  soon  after  the  birth  of  Mark,  moved  into 
a  house  of  his  own,  situated  on  High  Street,  which  ran  through 
a  different  part  of  the  same  hill.  It  was  a  spacious  square  build- 
ing of  some  dignity,  and  betrayed  a  lingering  allegiance  to 
Colonial  forms.  It  was  crowned  by  a  low  pyramidal  roof, 
broken  by  dormers,  and  its  corners  were  emphasized  by  pilas- 
ters. On  the  front  was  a  large  entrance  porch,  which  served  as 
a  piazza.  Robert  Hanna,  also,  had  a  separate  establishment ; 
and  capital  was  supplied  to  Levi,  wherewith  to  start  a  brewery  — 
a  business  which  was  later  abandoned  because  of  the  conversion 
of  a  large  part  of  the  family  to  the  cause  of  temperance. 

A  business  which  was  profitable  enough  to  maintain  about 
thirty  feet  of  filial  Hanna  was  obviously  something  more  than 
a  retail  store.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Benjamin  and  his  sons  were 
apparently  the  leading  wholesale  and  commission  merchants 
in  what  was  then  one  of  the  busiest  *  trading  towns  in  eastern 
Ohio.  Just  how  many  of  the  sons  were  made  partners  in  the 
business  is  not  certain.  The  membership  of  the  firm  varied  at 
different  times.  Accounts,  due-bills  and  notes  found  among 
Mark  Hanna's  papers  indicate  that  Benjamin  Hanna,  Leonard 
Hanna  and  Thomas  B.  Hanna  were  partners  in  business  under 
the  firm  name  of  B.,  L.,  &  T.  Hanna  as  early  as  August,  1842, 
and  as  late  as  May,  1849. 

They  were  less  interested  in  politics  than  were  the  majority 
of  the  successful  men  of  their  generation.  Only  one  out  of 


12         MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

Benjamin  Hanna's  seven  capable  and  energetic  sons  had  any 
political  ambition.  No  doubt  the  fact  that  they,  were  Quakers, 
and  in  particular  Hicksite  Quakers,  had  something  to  do  with 
this  peculiarity.  The  sect  had  a  tendency  to  keep  away  from 
political  contentions  and  responsibilities;  and  no  one  of  the 
Hanna  family  even  served  in  the  Legislature  or  held  anything 
but  a  town  office.  They  were  nevertheless  men  of  definite 
political  convictions.  Benjamin  and  all  his  sons  were  Whigs  — 
an  allegiance  which  followed  naturally  from  their  mercantile  in- 
terests. Those  who  survived  until  the  War  became  Republicans. 

As  Quakers  they  protested  vigorously  against  slavery.  After 
1800  many  Quakers  had  migrated  from  Virginia  into  Ohio,  so 
that  they  might  live  in  a  state  untainted  by  human  'bondage. 
In  all  probability  Robert  Hanna's  final  migration  had  been 
determined  by  the  wish  to  escape  from  the  neighborhood  of 
such  an  institution.  These  Quakers  later  became  a  soil  for 
the  growth  of  anti-slavery  feeling  in  Ohio ;  and  when  the  under- 
ground railroad  was  started  the  majority  of  the  stations  were 
situated  in  their  houses.  The  sympathies  of  the  Hanna  family  are 
plainly  indicated  by  the  assistance  they  gave  to  this  dangerous 
traffic.  In  the  cellar  of  Joshua  Hanna's  fine  brick  house  there 
had  been  built  a  secret  room,  which  was  used  as  a  place  of  con- 
cealment for  fugitive  slaves;  and  presumably  the  rest  of  the 
family  knew  and  approved  of  its  existence. 

As  was  also  natural  in  Hicksite  Quakers  they  had  an  instinc- 
tive sympathy  with  agitations  for  moral  reform.  The  period 
from  1840  until  1855  was  one  of  lively  ferment  of  opinion,  in 
which  the  preachers  of  all  kinds  of  reforming  creeds  found  many 
listeners  and  many  followers.  The  most  vital  movement  of 
this  kind,  abolitionism  apart,  was  that  in  favor  of  temperance. 
The  pioneer  American *  consumed  a  huge  amount  of  raw  spirits, 
being  provoked  thereto  both  by  its  cheapness  and  by  the  thirst 

1"In  May,  1832,"  to  quote  a  local  history,  "George  Graham  made 
application  for  a  license  to  retail  spirituous  liquors  at  the  corner 
of  the  Public  Square  and  Market  Street.  The  council,  being  satis- 
fied that  he  was  a  person  of  good  moral  character,  granted  a  license 
for  one  year  for  the  consideration  of  $10.  Before  adjournment  it  was 
decided  that  the  next  meeting  of  the  council  be  held  in  George  Graham's 
back  room." 


BENJAMIN   HANNA,    HIS   FAMILY  AND   HIS    FORTUNE      13 

inevitably  created  by  his  daily  consumption  of  bacon  and  salt 
pork.  Local  distilleries  were  among  the  earliest  manufacturing 
enterprises  in  all  pioneer  communities.  One  had  been  started 
in  New  Lisbon  soon  after  the  settlement  of  the  town,  and  its 
product  was  sold  for  only  twenty-five  cents  a  gallon.  The  first 
attempt  to  counteract  the  evils  of  the  large  amount  of  result- 
ing intoxication  took  the  mild  form  of  temperance  societies, 
whose  members  pledged  themselves  to  confine  their  drinking 
to  wine  and  beer.  « 

Sterner  methods  and  measures  were,  however,  needed  in 
order  to  check  the  serious  evils  of  gross  and  general  intoxica- 
tion. In  1847  one  of  the  famous  six  drunkards  of  Baltimore, 
who  had  been  preaching  total  abstinence  all  over  the  country 
with  great  success,  invaded  New  Lisbon,  and  held  meetings  every 
night  for  three  weeks.  No  hall  in  the  town  was  big  enough 
to  contain  his  audiences.  The  largest  church  was  crowded, 
.and  outside  in  the  street  were  overflow  meetings.  They  had 
apparently  a  profound  and  lasting  effect  on  the  community. 
The  Hannas  had  always  been  temperate,  but  some  of  them,  at 
least,  now  became  total  abstainers.  The  brewery  operated  by 
Levi  Hanna  was  sold,  and  the  two  youngest  sons  of  Benjamin 
were  among  the  charter  members  of  the  Total  Abstinence  Society. 

It  was,  however,  Leonard  Hanna,  Mark  Hanna's  father,  who 
took  the  most  prominent  part  of  any  of  the  family  in  the  tem- 
perance movement  of  eastern  Ohio.  He  was  the  only  fraction 
of  the  forty-two  feet  who  had  an  inclination  towards  public 
speaking  or  a  gift  for  it.  He  is  described  as  a  fluent  and 
forcible  speaker,  who  possessed  preeminently  the  power  of 
interesting  and  dominating  even  an  unsympathetic  audience. 
After  the  visit  of  the  eminent  Baltimore  drunkard,  Dr.  Hanna 
carried  on  the  agitation  for  many  years  in  the  vicinity  of  New 
Lisbon.  His  son,  H.  Melville  Hanna,  who  was  two  years 
younger  than  Mark,  can  remember  the  tenor  of  a  number  of  his 
father's  temperance  addresses.  As  was  natural  for  a  physician, 
he  emphasized  rather  the  physiological  than  the  moral  argu- 
ments for  total  abstinence.  Habitual  whiskey  drinkers,  he 
said,  were  only  half  as  likely  to  recover  from  acute  ailments; 
and  in  the  case  of  severe  surgical  operations  their  chances  were 
even  smaller. 


14        MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

Leonard  Hanna,  however,  was  not  merely  a  lecturer  on  tem- 
perance. He  was  the  only  exception  in  the  family  to  the  gen- 
eral abstention  from  an  active  interest  in  politics.  The  extent 
of  this  interest  is  difficult  to  establish,  but  undoubtedly  he 
ranked  among  the  abler  and  more  popular  Whig  stump  speakers 
in  that  part  of  Ohio.  He  was  compared  by  many  to  Tom  Cor- 
win,  who  was  the  leading  popular  orator  among  the  Whigs. 
According  to  the  custom  of  the  day,  he  used  to  hold  joint  de- 
bates with  prominent  Democrats,  the  two  verbal  contestants 
travelling  together  from  town  to  town  in  the  same  carriage.  His 
opponent  on  one  occasion  was  Edwin  M.  Stanton.  On  another 
occasion  (according  to  Kersey  Hanna)  Dr.  Hanna  and  David 
Todd  held  eleven  joint  discussions  in  different  parts  of  the 
Western  Reserve  —  one  of  them  in  Cleveland.  If  this  is  so, 
Leonard  Hanna  must  have  enjoyed  a  very  considerable  reputa- 
tion as  a  political  orator,  for  David  Todd,  afterwards  the  second 
of  Ohio's  war  governors,  was  one  of  the  most  conspicuous 
Democrats  in  the  state  and  a  speaker  of  recognized  ability  and 
force. 

Nevertheless  Dr.  Leonard  Hanna  was  apparently  not  elected 
to  any  public  office.  His  nearest  approach  to  election  occurred, 
according  to  the  statement  of  his  brother  Kersey,  in  1844,  when 
he  ran  for  Congress  as  a  Whig  and  cut  down  the  Democratic 
majority  in  his  district  from  about  5000  to  about  300  votes. 
A  failure  of  this  kind  gives  a  man  as  much  renown  as  would  ac- 
tual success ;  and  there  is  every  indication  that  Dr.  Hanna  stood 
exceptionally  well  among  his  political  associates  in  Ohio.  When 
H.  Melville  Hanna  went  to  Washington  at  the  beginning  of  the 
War  to  be  examined  for  admission  into  the  navy,  he  called  on 
Senator  Benjamin  Wade  at  his  father's  request,  and  was  warmly 
greeted  by  that  rough  old  anti-slavery  warrior.  He  was  glad  to 
do  anything  he  could  for  Dr.  Leonard  Hanna's  son. 

His  interest  in  politics  apparently  diminished  very  much 
towards  the  end  of  his  life.  His  son,  H.  Melville,  states  that  a 
friend  once  asked  his  father,  "  Why  didn't  you  stay  in  politics  ?" 
"Because/'  the  doctor  replied,  "I  would  have  to  get  into  the 
mud,"  which  sounds  well,  but  is  hardly  sufficient.  Doubtless 
certain  aspects  of  political  life  were  repellent  to  his  Puritan  and 
Quaker  training,  but  probably  both  his  health  and  his  busi- 


BENJAMIN   HANNA,    HIS   FAMILY  AND   HIS   FORTUNE       15 

ness  interests  had  much  to  do  with  his  diminishing  political 
activity.  Soon  after  1847  the  family  suffered  reverses  in  busi- 
ness, which  resulted  in  its  dispersal  in  1852.  Dr.  Hanna  was 
forced  to  start  his  business  career  all  over  again  under  novel 
surroundings;  and  his  new  work  and  its  heavier  responsibili- 
ties could  not  have  left  him  much  leisure  for  politics. 

Nevertheless,  it  is  significant  that  the  only  one  of  Benjamin 
Hanna's  sons  who  exhibited  any  active  personal  interest  in 
politics  was  Mark  Hanna's  father;  and  this  interest  was  ap- 
parently merely  one  expression  of  a  versatile  and  sympathetic 
disposition,  which  was  aroused  to  action  by  every  serious  call 
made  upon  him  by  his  domestic  and  social  surroundings.  In 
addition  to  being  a  business  man  and  a  political  speaker,  he  was 
an  energetic  temperance  reformer,  and  he  always  retained  a 
lively  interest  in  his  early  profession.  It  was  a  period  in  which 
one  man  could  easily  and  acceptably  play  many  parts,  and  in 
which  a  man  of  an  essential  social  and  communicative  disposi- 
tion was  inevitably  driven  to  play  many  parts.  The  better 
men  of  that  generation  tended  to  spread  their  personal  energy 
over  a  very  large  area. 

In  the  case  of  Dr.  Hanna  the  business  interest  was  dominant, 
and  the  others  only  subordinate.  He  was  a  man  who  acted  from 
personal  rather  than  impersonal  motives,  from  sympathies  and 
affections  rather  than  from  strong  purpose.  In  the  absence 
of  any  special  bent  for  professional  or  political  life,  he  merged 
his  own  interest  with  that  of  the  family.  By  the  year  1840 
there  were  not  very  many  men  in  Ohio,  outside  of  Cincinnati, 
who  were  as  much  like  capitalists  as  Benjamin  Hanna  and  his 
sons.  The  careers  of  the  sons  were  determined  by  the  oppor- 
tunities which  their  father  was  able  to  offer  to  them ;  and  in 
accepting  this  opportunity  Dr.  Leonard  Hanna  was  apparently 
the  only  one  who  sacrificed  other  personal  interests  of  any 
great  importance.  He  did  not  travel  very  far  either  as  a  phy- 
sician, a  politician  or  a  business  man,  but  if  his  efficiency  was 
diminished  by  his  versatility,  the  same  quality  served  only  to 
increase  the  attraction  of  his  personality. 

H.  Melville  Hanna  tells  a  story  about  his  father  and  grand- 
father which  is  both  touching  and  amusing,  and  which  may 
fitly  terminate  this  sketch  of  Mark  Hanna's  immediate  for- 


16         MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

bears.  After  Dr.  Leonard  Hanna  had  moved  to  Cleveland  in 
1852,  he  frequently  returned  to  New  Lisbon  to  see  Benjamin 
Hanna,  who  by  that  time  was  a  very  old  and  a  very  sick  man. 
While  talking  over  his  ailments  with  his  son,  who  retained  in 
the  family  the  authority  of  a  physician,  Benjamin  said,  "Dr. 
Speaker  has  stopped  my  smoking,  Leonard.  What  dost  thee 
think  about  it?"  The  other  answered  nothing,  but  going  to 
the  big  mahogany  sideboard,  filled  his  father's  pipe,  gave  it 
to  him  and  lighted  it.  The  old  man  took  a  few  puffs  and 
then  said,  "I  was  sure,  Leonard,  that  thee  knew  more  than 
Dr.  Speaker." 


CHAPTER  III 

BOYHOOD 

IN  the  house  of  Dr.  Leonard  Hanna  there  seems  to  have  been 
less  discipline  and  more  kindliness  than  was  usual  in  American 
homes  of  that  period.  Discipline  there  was,  for  Samantha 
Converse  Hanna  had  inherited  the  traditions  of  domestic 
New  England,  and  as  Dr.  Hanna  was  frequently  away  from 
home  for  days  and  weeks  on  end,  the  mother's  authority  was 
dominant  and  pervasive.  She  exercised  it  decisively  but  with 
fairness  and  good  judgment.  She  is  described  as  a  woman  of 
positive  character,  energetic  mind  and  considerable  executive 
ability.  Her  active  life  was  centred  around  her  home  and 
children,  but  she  was  social  by  instinct,  and  under  less  primitive 
social  conditions  she  would  have  entertained  liberally.  As 
it  was,  whenever  any  conspicuous  man  came  to  New  Lisbon, 
she  always  wanted  to  have  him  at  her  table. 

Dr.  Hanna,  on  the  other  hand,  was  preeminently  a  kindly 
and  an  easy-going  man.  He  did  not  believe  in  the  practice  of 
flogging,  which  at  that  time  prevailed  in  many  American  homes ; 
and,  as  we  shall  see,  he  was  inclined  to  let  his  children  have 
their  own  way.  While  his  wife  was  bright  but  not  witty,  he 
had  an  Irishman's  love  of  a  good  joke.  Miss  Hattie  Converse, 
a  cousin  of  Samantha  Hanna,  and  for  a  while  a  school-teacher 
in  the  town,  lived  with  the  family;  and  she  and  Dr.  Hanna  were 
continually  exchanging  jokes  and  sharpening  their  wits  at  each 
other's  expense. 

The  Leonard  Hanna  household  was  not  only  unusually  genial 
for  its  time  and  place,  but  it  was  also  unusually  refined.  The 
Converses  were  much  more  like  gentlefolks  than  were  the 
average  pioneer  settlers  in  the  Western  States.  Samantha 
Hanna  had  a  taste  for  flowers,  ornaments  and  good  furniture, 
and  their  house  itself  was  an  exceptionally  good-looking  build- 
ing for  Ohio  in  1840.  Whenever  Leonard  Hanna  made  one 
c  17 


18         MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

of  his  frequent  trips  to  Philadelphia  on  business,  his  wife  loaded 
him  with  commissions.  Their  furniture  was  all  imported  from 
the  East,  and  what  was  still  more  unusual,  the  yard  was  planted 
with  shrubbery,  which  had  also  to  be  obtained  from  the  sea- 
board. The  table  was  abundant,  the  food  well-cooked,  the 
linen  of  excellent  quality,  and  the  children  well-clothed.  All  to- 
gether very  few  Ohio  boys  of  that  time  were  brought  up  in  such 
a  well-equipped,  well-ordered  and  genial  home. 

Of  course,  it  remained  very  simple,  and  all  hands  had  to 
share  in  the  work.  If  Mark  Hanna  escaped  the  scars  of  that 
grim  struggle  for  existence  in  which  most  Americans  of  the 
previous,  and  to  a  large  extent  of  his  own,  generation  were 
engaged,  he  was  certainly  not  brought  up  in  idleness.  As  soon 
as  he  was  old  enough,  he  did  his  share  of  work  in  the  field, 
and  he  had  certain  regular  chores  assigned  to  him,  such  as  driv- 
ing the  cows  to  pasture.  There  were  no  gentlemen  of  leisure 
in  a  Middle  Western  town  before  the  War.  Of  course  there 
were  loafers,  but  they  were  called  loafers.  The  possession  even 
of  considerable  means  did  not  entitle  a  man  or  his  sons  to  aban- 
don labor  with  their  own  hands. 

In  religion  a  mitigation  of  the  earlier  Puritanism  had  already 
taken  place.  Benjamin  Hanna's  sons  did  not  remain  strict 
Quakers.  One  of  the  laws  of  the  association  was  that  any  per- 
son who  was  married  outside  the  church  or  who  was  married 
by  anybody  but  a  Quaker  minister  should  be  disowned.  The 
application  of  this  rule  left  Leonard  Hanna  and  all  his  brothers 
except  Kersey  outside  the  pale.  It  does  not  appear,  however, 
that  they  became  active  in  any  other  denomination.  Their 
situation  made  them  tolerant,  and  the  process  of  religious 
emasculation  which  begins  in  toleration  usually  ends  in  indif- 
ference. Kersey  Hanna  stated  that  Leonard,  in  spite  of  certain 
doctrinal  disagreements  with  the  Hicksite  Quakers,  considered 
himself  to  be  by  conviction  a  member  of  that  sect.  Never- 
theless, after  leaving  New  Lisbon,  he  regularly  attended  the 
Presbyterian  Church,  to  which  his  wife  belonged,  without  be- 
coming a  Presbyterian  himself.  Thus  in  the  matter  of  reli- 
gious training  the  earlier  rigorous  standards  were  very  much 
relaxed;  and  Mark  Hanna  as  a  boy  could,  as  we  shall  see, 
joke  with  impunity  about  his  religious  convictions. 


BOYHOOD  19 

Mark  was  assuredly  a  good-looking  boy.  Neither  he  nor  his 
brothers  were  as  tall  as  the  previous  generation  of  Hannas, 
and  Mark  himself,  when  he  grew  up,  looked  almost  short,  be- 
cause his  broad  and  powerful  frame  seemed  to  need  a  few 
more  inches  of  height.  His  uncle  Kersey  Hanna  describes 
him  as  short,  strong  and  rugged,  with  a  full  round  figure. 
On  the  other  hand,  most  of  his  playmates  recollect  him  as  al- 
most slender.  His  complexion  was  fair,  his  hair  brown  and  his 
expression  frank,  serious  and  communicative.  But  both  as  boy 
and  man  the  most  striking  part  of  his  personal  appearance  were 
his  big,  alert,  shrewd,  searching  brown  eyes,  which,  like  his  taper- 
ing fingers,  he  inherited  from  his  father  and  which  he  alone  of 
his  father's  sons  did  inherit.  In  this  as  in  certain  other  respects 
Mark  Hanna  was  another  version  of  his  father  with  better 
health,  more  energy  and  more  purpose. 

In  describing  the  life  led  by  the  boys  of  Mark  Hanna's  genera- 
tion in  New  Lisbon  and  certain  aspects  of  their  education,  we 
have  one  very  excellent  authority.  Shortly  after  Senator 
Hanna's  death,  a  boyhood  friend  and  playmate,  Dr.  Henry  G. 
McCook,  published  a  "  Threnody "  on  Mr.  Hanna,  the  notes  to 
which  contain  an  abundance  of  facts  and  stories  about  New 
Lisbon  in  the  forties;  and  the  reader  may  be  referred  to  that 
volume  in  case  he  would  like  to  know  more  than  I  shall  tell  him 
about  the  place,  its  youthful  inhabitants,  their  occupations 
and  sports. 

He  says  nothing  about  the  first  school  which  Mark  Hanna 
attended,  which  was  kept  by  his  mother's  cousin,  Miss  Hattie 
Converse.  Other  schoolmates  of  Mr.  Hanna  have,  however,  fur- 
nished several  authentic  stories  about  this  episode,  each  of  which 
throws  some  light  upon  the  school,  the  boy  and  the  relations 
between  the  boy  and  his  teacher.  One  lady  who  went  to  Miss 
Converse's  school  describes  her  fellow-pupil  as  pale  and  slender, 
but  active  and  mischievous.  He  was  accused  of  pushing  a 
little  boy  over  a  bank  on  the  hillside  where  a  number  of  chil- 
dren were  picking  sorrel.  Miss  Converse  evidently  thought 
the  offence  extremely  culpable,  for  she  made  him  take  off  his 
coat,  and  switched  him  sharply  on  his  bare  arms  —  all  of  which 
frightened  the  little  girls  and  made  them  burst  into  tears.  On 
another  occasion  he  was  whipped  for  being  late.  Before  going 


20        MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

to  school,  he  had  to  drive  the  cows  to  pasture,  and  on  this  par- 
ticular morning  they  got  away  from  him,  and  caused  him,  ac- 
cording to  his  own  account,  much  trouble  and  loss  of  time 
in  getting  them  together  again.  Miss  Converse  listened  to  this 
excuse  for  his  tardy  arrival  and  doubted  its  truth.  Mark 
stuck  to  his  story,  said  that  he  had  never  told  a  lie  and  was  not 
then  telling  one.  But  he  was  none  the  less  punished.  In  the 
end  Dr.  Hanna  heard  of  the  fault,  its  punishment,  privately 
verified  Mark's  excuse  and  rebuked  the  doubting  teacher. 

There  are  other  indications  that  Mark  did  not  get  along  well 
with  his  mother's  cousin.  One  day  Miss  Converse  found  him 
loitering  in  the  street  after  school  was  over,  instead  of  making 
straight  for  home  after  the  manner  of  really  virtuous  lads. 
Here  was  an  opening,  which  the  excellent  pedagog  could  not 
overlook;  but  when  she  took  him  to  task,  he  did  not  tamely 
submit.  He  asserted  that  her  authority  did  not  extend  be- 
yond the  school  building  and  grounds.  She  asserted  that  it 
did.  The  issue  was  presented  to  his  parents,  and  they  decided 
in  his  favor;  and  in  this  decision  had  the  support  of  public  opin- 
ion. The  episode  indicates  a  disposition  to  stand  up  for  his 
personal  rights  rare  in  so  small  a  lad,  and  confidence  in  him  on 
the  part  of  his  parents.  It  also  indicates  that  even  in  1845, 
in  a  small  Middle  Western  town,  the  American  boy  was  coming 
into  his  own.  There  were  parents  who  could  understand  a 
boyish  propensity  to  loiter,  and  there  were  children  who  were 
beginning  to  discover  and  insist  upon  the  great  American  do- 
mestic principle  of  filial  authority. 

But  I  do  not  wonder  that  Miss  Hattie  Converse,  who  played 
the  part  of  King  George  in  this  new  struggle  for  independence, 
disliked  her  mischievous  pupil.  Like  many  other  ladies,  she  had 
a  peculiar  horror  of  snakes.  Several  witnesses  assert  that  Mark 
used  to  conceal  little  garter  snakes  in  her  text-books,  and  so 
cause  her  the  utmost  discomfiture.  Whether  he  was  switched 
for  this  offence,  as  he  very  well  deserved,  the  records  are  silent. 

They  are  also  silent  as  to  the  length  of  time  that  Mark  at- 
tended Miss  Converse's  school,  and  they  conflict  as  to  the 
identity  of  his  next  school-teacher.  The  most  renowned  and 
popular  school  in  New  Lisbon  during  Mark's  boyhood  was  kept 
by  a  Scotch-Irishman  named  David  Anderson.  This  man,  whose 


BOYHOOD  21 

rugged  character  was  typical  of  many  of  the  pioneer  pedagogs  of 
the  Middle  West,  began  to  teach  in  Lisbon  about  1835,  and  con- 
tinued to  do  so  until  obliged  to  retire  by  failing  health  in  1872. 
He  was  a  stern,  hard  Puritan,  who  did  not  scruple  to  use  the 
ruler  on  his  pupils,  and  apparently  needed  in  the  exercise  of  his 
calling  some  warlike  weapon.  The  story  is  that,  when  he  at- 
tempted to  chastise  some  big  culprit,  he  was  assaulted  by  his 
victim,  and  only  escaped  a  thrashing  by  virtue  of  the  assist- 
ance rendered  by  the  rest  of  his  pupils.  Yet  his  pupils,  ap- 
parently, did  not  have  any  reason  to  be  fond  of  him.  He  wore 
rubber  shoes,  and  would  step  silently  up  behind  his  boys 
when  they  were  supposed  to  be  writing  on  their  slates.  If  he 
found  them  drawing  pictures  or  scribbling  messages,  he  would 
box  them  soundly  on  the  ears  —  first  on  one  side  and  then  on 
the  other,  as  the  head  was  forced  over  by  the  force  of  the  first 
blow.  He  was  also  subject  to  violent  outbursts  of  temper, 
which  are  attributed  by  one  witness  to  the  influence  of  a  malevo- 
lent wife  —  a  lady  who  in  her  playful  moods  used  to  threaten 
her  husband  with  a  butcher's  knife  and  was  popularly  supposed 
to  be  a  witch. 

In  spite,  however,  of  his  peculiarities,  in  spite  of  his  sedulous 
laying  on  of  two  rulers,  one  round  and  one  flat,  in  spite  of  his 
assumption  of  authority  over  the  behavior  of  his  pupils  outside 
of  the  schoolroom,  his  memory  is  still  reverenced  in  New  Lisbon. 
Some  years  ago  a  fund  was  collected  from  his  former  pupils 
with  which  to  erect  a  permanent  memorial  to  the  village 
teacher,  but  the  project  fell  through,  because  of  the  failure  of  the 
bank  in  which  the  accumulated  funds  had  been  deposited.  He 
was,  apparently,  with  all  his  tantrums,  his  cuffings  and  his  busy 
rulers,  a  kind-hearted  man.  The  statement  that  he  would  be 
amiable  and  cheerful  for  the  whole  day  whenever  a  new  pupil 
happened  in  and  paid  the  fee  of  two  dollars  for  'the  first  quar- 
ter, points  to  a  hard  and  a  fruitless  fight  against  poverty  as 
well  as  domestic  unhappiness.  No  wonder  that  his  temper 
was  none  of  the  best  and  his  discipline  harsh.  The  fact  that  in 
spite  of  all  his  failings  the  memory  of  "Davy"  Anderson  ,is 
cherished  in  New  Lisbon  sufficiently  proves  that  when  the 
books  were  balanced,  his  pupils  could  place  to  his  credit  a  great 
deal  of  rough  but  effective  elementary  and  moral  schooling. 


22        MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

I  have  paused  for  a  moment  over  the  description  of  David 
Anderson  and  his  school,  because  of  the  light  which  the  man, 
his  methods  and  circumstances  throw  upon  the  New  Lisbon  of 
the  decade  from  1840  to  1850 ;  but  there  is  some  doubt  whether 
Mark  Hanna  was  ever  cuffed  and  drilled  by  the  irascible  Scotch- 
Irishman.  At  the  local  centennial  celebration  in  1903  the 
names  of  Mark  Hanna  and  "Davy"  Anderson,  as  the  two  most 
renowned  celebrities  of  New  Lisbon,  were  continually  being 
coupled.  Speaking  of  Anderson,  the  Senator  said  to  the  Hon. 
Chas.  C.  Connell,  who  had  been  writing  a  history  of  the  town 
prepared  for  the  occasion :  "I  don't  like  to  spoil  your  story, 
Connell;  but  I  never  went  to  school  with  'Davy'  Anderson." 
On  the  other  hand,  Dr.  Henry  C.  McCook  distinctly  states  that 
he  and  Mark  Hanna  attended  "Davy"  Anderson's  school; 
and  Howard  Melville  Hanna  is  equally  emphatic  in  testifying 
to  the  same  effect.  There  is  no  way  now  of  definitely  settling 
it;  but  if  Mark  Hanna  ever  did  attend  "Davy's"  .school,  it 
could  not  have  been  for  long.  There  is  evidence  that  from  1850 
to  1852  he  was  sent  to  another  school-teacher ;  and  authentic 
incidents  connected  with  his  attendance  of  Miss  Converse's 
school  indicate  that  he  must  have  been  at  that  time  a  boy  of 
ten  or  twelve.  Perhaps  a  father  who  objected  to  flogging,  and 
who  supported  his  son  in  a  rebellion  against  the  exercise  of  a 
school-teacher's  authority  outside  of  school  hours,  would  have 
been  loath  to  submit  his  son  to  "Davy"  Anderson's  rule  and 
rulers. 

When  the  "Union-School  System"  of  graded  public  schools 
was  adopted,  Mark  Hanna  apparently  went  to  public  school. 
In  the  general  re-grading  and  distribution  of  the  children, 
Mark  Hanna  and  Henry  McCook  were  assigned  to  the  high 
school,  and  were  made  deskmates.  The  school  was  lodged  in 
the  basement  of  the  Presbyterian  Church,  and  here  Mark 
continued  his  education  until  he  left  New  Lisbon.  "As  I 
recall  him,"  says  Dr.  McCook,  "in  the  'roundabout'  or  tailless 
coat  then  worn  by  boys,  he  was  a  ruddy-cheeked  youth,  rather 
slightly  built,  certainly  not  stout  or  stocky  —  a  pleasant, 
wholesome  fellow,  clean  of  tongue  and  with  more  polish  of  man- 
ners than  many  of  his  playmates.  Nevertheless,  we  were  in 
several  school  scrapes  together,  in  one  of  which  the  writer  saved 


MARK  AND  HOWARD  MELVILLE  HANNA  AS  CHILDREN 


BOYHOOD  23 

his  deskmate  from  a  thrashing  by  resisting  the  teacher  in  what 
was  by  our  schoolroom  standards  an  unlawful  mode  of  punish- 
ment. This  diverted  attention  from  my  fellow-culprit,  who 
in  the  melee  went  scot-free."  Dr.  McCook  adds:  " Several 
teachers  had  charge  of  the  high  school  during  the  pupilage  of 
the  Senator  'and  his  deskmate,  but  the  one  who  wielded  the 
greatest  and  most  wholesome  influence  upon  our  characters 
was  Reuben  McMillan.  To  him  the  writer  owes  more  than  any 
other  instructor  in  school  or  college ;  and  this  affection  and  this 
gratitude  were  shared  during  his  school  life,  at  least,  by  Mr. 
Hanna." 

Before  leaving  the  subject  of  Mark  Hanna's  schooling  in  New 
Lisbon,  attention  must  be  called  to  an  unofficial  source  of  in- 
struction and  training  which  the  lad  shared  with  some  of  his 
playmates.  On  Jan.  12,  1850,  there  was  instituted  the  "  Poly- 
delphian  Society  of  New  Lisbon,"  a  debating  club,  whose  con- 
stitution and  behavior  are  so  well  described  in  a  letter  written 
by  General  Anson  G.  McCook,  then  Secretary  of  the  United  States 
Senate  to  Major  W.  W.  Armstrong  of  Cleveland  in  April,  1892, 
that  I  reproduce  it  in  part :  "With  what  interest  you  read  [in 
a  book  containing  the  constitution  and  minutes  of  the  society] 
of  the  efforts  to  provide  for  every  possible  contingency  to  make  our 
debating  society  a  success  —  the  elaborate  way  in  which  we  pro- 
vided for  the  duties  of  the  officers  —  the  limitations  we  placed 
upon  debate,  peremptorily  shutting  off  long-winded  orations  — 
the  amount  of  fines  to  be  imposed  upon  disorderly  members, 
running  from  '5  to  25  cents'  —  the  power,  as  we  expressed  it  in 
terms  that  very  closely  resemble  a  provision  in  the  Constitu- 
tion of  the  United  States,  to  lay  and  collect  taxes  for  necessary 
purposes  —  the  express  provision  that  no  one  shall  address  the 
chair  except  upon  his  feet  and  the  positive  prohibition  'that 
no  member  should  be  permitted  to  whistle  or  eat  in  the  society ' : 
all  expressed  in  quaint  and  boyish  phraseology  but  with  un- 
mistakable clearness  and  directness.  From  the  record  the 
first  question  we  attempted  to  debate  was  'Was  the  Mexican 
War  justifiable?'  and  the  minutes  gravely  state  that  'after  a 
good  deal  of  arguing,  the  jury  brought  in  its  decision  for  the 
negative.' 

"It  is  wonderful,  too,  with  what  splendid  courage  these  un- 


24         MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

trained  boys  tackled  subjects  that  have  puzzled  the  best  in- 
tellects of  the  country;  and  it  is  remarkable  with  what  good 
sense  and  justice  they  decided  them.  In  nearly  every  instance 
these  boys  of  from  12  to  15  years  of  age,  living  in  a  small  town 
in  eastern  Ohio,  placed  themselves  squarely  upon  the  side  of 
questions  that  since  then  have  been  maintained  by  the  best 
minds  and  consciences  of  the  country.  For  instance,  on  the 
questions,  'Should  flogging  be  abolished  in  the  Navy?'  'Shall 
Canada  be  annexed  to  the  United  States  ? '  and  '  Will  the  conquest 
of  New  Mexico  and  Upper  California  result  in  more  good  than  evil? ' 
the  society  said '  Yes. '  On  the  then  comparatively  new  question  of 
'  Should  women  be  allowed  to  vote  ? '  the  boys  also  said  l  Yes. '  On 
the  question,  t  Have  the  Negroes  more  cause  for  complaint  against 
the  Whites  than  the  Indians  ? '  the  Polydelphians  even  at  that 
early  day  decided  wisely  in  the  affirmative ;  and  your  friend  and 
townsman,  Mark  Hanna,  took  the  side  of  the  black  man  and 
won  his  cause.  On  the  question,  'Should  the  United  States 
take  any  part  in  the  Hungarian  struggle  for  liberty?'  the 
boys  stood  by  our  traditional  policy,  notwithstanding  the  temp- 
tation to  be  led  off  by  spread  eagle  oratory.  With  scarcely  an 
exception  the  boys  placed  themselves  on  the  side  of  justice, 
humanity,  good  morals  and  good  government,  and  that  speaks 
pretty  well,  it  seems  to  me,  for  the  atmosphere  and  influences 
which  surrounded  these  boys." 

Although  one  of  the  younger  members,  Mark  Hanna  was  active 
and  prominent  in  the  Polydelphian  Society.  In  his  "  Threnody  " 
on  the  Senator,  Dr.  Henry  C.  McCook  reproduces  a  copy  of  the 
minutes  for  one  of  the  meetings  at  which  Mark  acted  as  sec- 
retary. On  this  occasion  the  portentous  subject  was  discussed, 
"Which  does  the  most  good  to  a  republican  government, 
Virtue  or  Intelligence  ?  "  The  secretary  states  that  the  question 
was  decided  in  favor  of  the  "negitive";  but  whether  the 
"negitive"  is  equivalent  to  Virtue  or  Intelligence  the  scribe 
fails  to  record.  Mark  was  one  of  the  jury.  His  handwriting 
at  that  time  (he  was  just  thirteen)  was  awkward  and  unformed, 
his  spelling  was  far  from  impeccable,  and  his  power  of  compo- 
sition probably  inferior  to  that  of  an  average  well-trained  boy 
of  the  same  age  to-day.  But  his  handwriting  shows  the  gen- 
eral characteristics  of  his  later  penmanship. 


MARK  HANNA  AS  A  BOY 


BOYHOOD  25 

As  was  natural  in  a  community  just  emerging  from  the  rough- 
ness of  the  frontier,  the  games  of  the  New  Lisbon  boys  some- 
times took  on  a  semblance  of  war,  and  the  warring  factions 
took  their  names  and  recruited  their  forces  from  different 
parts  of  the  town.  The  nature  and  circumstances  of  these 
combats  have  been  told  in  so  lively  a  manner  by  Dr.  Henry  C. 
McCook,  that  I  shall  merely  transcribe  his  account. 

"The  inherent  tendency  of  men  to  divide  into  parties,  fac- 
tions, sects,  and  to  contend  with  and  for  the  same,  often  with- 
out the  least  apparent  reasonableness,  was  well  shown  among 
our  village  boys.  The  town  was  divided  into  two  great  sec- 
tions, known  in  the  graphic  rather  than  elegant  diction  of  boy- 
hood as  Sheep  Hill  and  Frog  Pond.  Between  the  two  was 
a  narrow  belt  called  Mid-town  or  Middle-town,  whose  bounda- 
ries and  subjects  were  determined  partly  by  location  and  partly 
by  natural  and  social  selection.  The  Hanna  boys,  Mark  and 
Melville,  belonged  to  this  section,  and  there  the  writer  had  his 
citizenship.  For  the  most  part  the  down-town  boys  went  with 
the  Frog-ponders,  and  the  up-town  boys  with  the  Sheep- 
hillers.  But  there  were  not  hard  and  fast  lines,  and  the  Mid- 
dle-towners  had  recruits  from  both  sections,  determined  by 
personal  preference,  special  friendships  and  boyish  fancy. 

"The  rivalries  between  these  parties  grew  into  feuds,  and  these 
were  at  one  time  so  intense  that  individual  fights  and  boy 
riots  occurred,  in  which,  as  a  rule,  Mid-town  and  Frog  Pond 
were  allies.  I  remember  one  battle  in  which  the  parties  met  by 
challenge  in  a  field  and  grove  north  of  the  Hanna  place.  The 
three  clans  marched  to  the  rendezvous  in  companies,  and  after 
some  preliminary  skirmishing  it  was  proposed  to  settle  the  con- 
troversy not  by  arbitration,  but  by  the  method  of  ancient 
chivalry,  a  fight  between  the  captains  of  two  of  the  factions. 
The  Middle-town  captain  promptly  accepted  for  himself  and 
the  Frog-ponders,  and  joined  in  fisticuff  combat  with  the  Sheep 
Hill  captain,  a  stout  and  plucky  lad  called  Loot  Smith,  two 
years  older  than  he.  Luther  got  the  better  of  his  opponent,  and 
had  him  down,  pummelling  him  badly,  when  the  impatient  parti- 
sans of  the  worsted  Mid-towner  broke  bounds,  and  with  a  shout 
rushed  into  the  fistic  ring,  rescued  their  fallen  chief,  and  a  general 
battle  began  over  and  around  the  two  leaders.  In  this  melee 


26         MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

one  of  our  side  —  he  was  a  Frog-ponder  —  who  carried  a  real 
sword,  an  ancestral  relic  of  some  war,  badly  hacked  the  arm  of 
a  young  Sheep-hiller." 

On  another  occasion  the  hostilities  assumed  such  a  serious 
form  that  a  crowd  of  citizens,  including  the  mothers  of  the 
combatants,  gathered  on  the  street ;  but  in  spite  of  weeping  and 
imploring  the  boys  were  too  excited  to  abandon  their  rough 
war  game.  It  took  John  McCook,  the  father  of  Henry,  a 
stalwart  man,  six-feet-two  in  height,  to  end  this  particular  bat- 
tle ;  and  even  he  might  have  failed  without  the  assistance  of  a 
"red  rawhide,  mighty  as  the  sword  of  Gideon."  Thereafter 
the  easy-going  parents  of  New  Lisbon  decided  to  put  an  end 
to  these  puerile  combats.  Some  witnesses  assert  that  Mark 
Hanna  was  for  a  while  captain  of  the  "Sheep  Hill"  crowd, 
and  that  the  "Mid-town"  gang  mentioned  by  Mr.  McCook  was 
also  called  "Dutch  McCook's"  crowd— "Dutch  McCook"  be- 
ing no  other  than  Henry  McCook  himself.  His  crowd,  while  an 
independent  command,  usually  fought  with  the  Frog-ponders. 

Boys  whose  mimic  battles  could  cause  such  consternation 
to  their  parents  came  of  fighting  blood;  and  indeed  in  no 
part  ,of  the  country  was  a  more  manly,  vigorous  and  sturdy 
lot  of  people  gathered  .together  than  in  this  particular  part 
of  Ohio.  The  community  subsequently  proved  its  mettle  in 
both  peace  and  war.  One  family  in  particular  of  Scotch- 
Irish  Presbyterians,  which  was  allied  to  the  Hanna  family  by 
marriage,  bore  an  extraordinary  record  in  the  war.  Every- 
body has  heard  of  the  fighting  McCooks,  but  everybody 
does  not  know  they  came  from  New  Lisbon.  George  McCook 
and  Mary,  his  wife,  two  of  the  early  settlers  of  New  Lisbon, 
had  three  sons.  The  first  of  these  sons,  Dr.  George  McCook, 
was  the  father  of  one  son  and  seven  daughters,  two  of  whom 
married  sons  of  Benjamin  Hanna.  It  was  this  particular  Mc- 
Cook who  made  the  famous  retort  to  a  heckler,  when  he  was 
urging  his  fellow-townsmen  to  enlist  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war. 
He  was  asked  by  an  auditor,  "Why  don't  you  go  to  the  War  ? " 
"Young  man,"  Dr.  McCook  loudly  answered,  "if  this  war  lasts 
six  months,  there  will  be  more  McCooks  in  the  army  than 
there  are  Indians  in  Hell." 

The  boys  who  played  and  fought  with  Mark  Hanna  have  al- 


BOYHOOD  27 

most  as  good  a  civil  as  a  military  record.  There  have  been 
among  them  "two  territorial  governors,  a  secretary  of  the 
United  States  Senate,  who  had  also  been  a  representative 
in  Congress,  several  clergymen  of  note,  college  professors, 
authors,  and  editors  and  many  physicians,  lawyers  and  suc- 
cessful business  men."  The  majority  of  them  were  picked 
men,  —  picked,  that  is,  by  the  happy  accident  of  birth  and 
blood,  a  sort  of  a  natural  aristocracy. 

Mark  Hanna  did  more  than  hold  his  own  among  his  vigorous 
playmates.  He  was  one  of  their  leaders  —  although  not  any 
more  of  a  leader  than  were  a  dozen  other  boys.  All  accounts 
agree  as  to  his  disposition  and  behavior.  He  was  active,  will- 
ing, sociable,  generous,  friendly,  mischievous,  high-spirited 
and  aggressive.  He  did  not  shirk  any  task  which  could  be 
properly  laid  upon  him,  and  he  eagerly  sought  all  sorts  of  games, 
amusements  and  contests  of  skill  and  strength.  He  learned 
his  lessons,  but  he  was  not  studious.  He  did  his  chores,. but 
during  their  performance  he  was  always  planning  some  other 
and  more  amusing  occupation.  In  short,  he  was  thoroughly 
a  boy  —  wise  not  beyond  his  years,  but  according  to  his  years. 

His  behavior  as  a  boy  was  not,  however,  entirely  a  matter  of 
the  natural  and  wholesome  inconsequentiality  of  youth.  His 
nature  was  not  cast  in  any  special  mold.  It  was  not  biassed 
in  favor  of  any  single  expression.  He  passed  easily  and  freely 
from  one  occupation  to  another,  and  did  not  linger  long  over 
any  particular  task.  What  gave  singleness  and  wholesome- 
ness  to  his  personality  as  a  boy  and  later  as  a  man  was  not  the 
possession  of  any  special  faculty  or  interest,  but  an  all-round 
adaptability  and  humanity.  From  the  beginning  his  great 
gift  was  a  gift  for  good-fellowship.  According  to  the  unani- 
mous testimony  of  those  who  knew  him  as  a  boy  he  was  expan- 
sive, good-natured  and  sympathetic  —  claiming  friendship  and 
fidelity  and  returning  all  that  he  received  with  abundant  in- 
terest. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  PASSING  OF  NEW  LISBON 

BENJAMIN  HANNA  and  his  sons  were  so  prosperous  in  New 
Lisbon  that  had  the  town  itself  continued  to  prosper,  most  of 
the  family,  including  probably  Mark  Hanna,  would  have  re- 
mained there  indefinitely.  But  New  Lisbon  suffered  one  of  those 
set-backs  to  which  our  rapidly  changing  economic  conditions 
subject  many  American  towns  and  cities,  and  from  which  it 
never  fully  recovered.  Inasmuch  as  this  set-back  was  chiefly 
due  to  the  failure  of  an  enterprise  which  involved  the  business 
and  the  capital  of  the  Hanna  firm  and  resulted  hi  the  dispersal 
of  the  family,  its  causes,  incidents  and  consequences  must  be 
described  in  some  detail. 

The  great  need  of  the  pioneer  communities  was  cheap  and 
adequate  means  of  transportation.  In  its  absence  they  were 
confined  to  local  markets.  They  could  do  little  with  their 
corn  except  feed  it  to  their  hogs,  and  not  very  much  with  their 
hogs  except  eat  them.  Without  transportation  the  very  fer- 
tility of  their  lands  and  their  own  energy  and  hard  work  merely 
increased  the  local  congestion  of  agricultural  products.  With 
transportation  their  farms  doubled  in  value,  and  they  could 
sell  their  superabundance  of  commodities  for  a  relative  abun- 
dance of  cash.  The  consequence  was  that  the  pioneers  hankered 
after  improved  means  of  transport  very  much  as  their  forbears 
had  hankered  after  salvation. 

Early  in  the  nineteenth  century  the  cheapest  and  most  efficient 
means  of  transport  was  by  water.  Of  course  road  builders 
were  active;  but  in  the  West  the  distances  were  too  great  to 
permit  of  the  economical  transportation  of  freight  in  wagons, 
and  the  country  was  too  sparsely  settled  to  support  really  good 
roads.  The  markets  they  wanted  to  reach  were  hundreds  of 
miles  away.  Waterways  were  the  thing ;  and  the  invention  of 

28 


THE    PASSING   OF  NEW   LISBON  29 

the  steamboat  increased  suddenly  and  enormously  the  commer- 
cial value  of  navigable  streams.  Ohio  was  bounded  on  the 
south  by  one  of  the  greatest  navigable  rivers  in  the  country; 
on  the  north  by  one  of  a  string  of  navigable  lakes;  and  it  was  cut 
up  by  a  system  of  smaller  watercourses  which  could  be  used  for 
scows  and  flatboats.  Those  parts  of  the  state  which  enjoyed 
immediate  access  to  such  means  of  transport  profited  enor- 
mously. The  other  parts  of  the  state  languished.  Cincinnati 
was  the  commercial  metropolis.  In  1840  it  possessed  almost 
seven  times  as  many  inhabitants  as  Cleveland. 

The  only  way  to  make  up  for  the  lack  of  natural  navigable 
waterways  was  to  build  canals ;  and  after  some  years  of  hesita- 
tion Ohio  took  to  building  canals  in  earnest.  Between  the 
years  1825  and  1842,  when  the  system  of  state  canals  was  com- 
pleted, there  were  constructed  in  Ohio  some  658  miles  of  canals 
at  a  total  cost  of  nearly  $15,000,000;  and  of  these  the  most 
important  was  the  Ohio  Canal,  which  ran  from  Portsmouth 
on  the  Ohio  River  across  the  state  to  Cleveland  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Cuyahoga  on  Lake  Erie.  "The  effect  of  these  improve- 
ments," says  the  historian  of  Ohio,1  "upon  the  growth  and 
prosperity  of  the  state  can  hardly  be  exaggerated.  They 
opened  to  her  farmers  and  merchants  the  markets  of  the  Ohio, 
the  Lakes  and  New  York.  They  enhanced  the  value  of  the 
lands  and  of  the  products.  They  not  only  united  a  long  segre- 
gated people,  but  made  them  prosperous." 

New  Lisbon,  however,  was  not  properly  situated  to  obtain 
any  benefit  from  the  system  of  state  canals.  It  was  separated 
from  the  Ohio  River  on  the  east  by  a  dozen  miles  of  rough 
country,  and  from  the  Ohio  Canal  on  the  west  by  several  times 
that  distance.  Its  inhabitants  realized,  as  soon  as  the  canal 
building  began,  that  it  would  lose  its  standing  as  the  busiest 
trading  centre  in  the  interior  of  eastern  Ohio,  unless  it  could 
obtain  thoroughly  good  water  communication  with  the  local  and 
remoter  markets.  As  early  as  Jan.  11,1 826,  the  General  Assembly 
authorized  the  incorporation  of  a  company  to  construct  the 
Sandy  and  Beaver  Canal,  which  was  to  run  from  a  point  on 
the  Ohio  River  through  New  Lisbon  to  a  point  on  the  Ohio 
Canal  in  Tuscawaras  County.  In  this  way  the  products  of 

i "  Ohio,"  by  Rufus  King,  p.  350. 


30         MAKCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

New  Lisbon  and  its  neighborhood  could  be  cheaply  transported 
both  to  Pittsburgh  and  Cincinnati,  and  to  Cleveland  and  Buffalo; 
and  New  Lisbon  would  not  only  hold  its  own,  but  become  a 
populous  thriving  city. 

Evidently,  however,  there  were  difficulties  connected  with 
the  raising  of  capital  for  such  a  purely  local  enterprise.  Prob- 
ably it  did  not  look  as  good  to  outlanders  as  it  did  to  the 
people  of  New  Lisbon.  As  an  air  line  the  distance  between 
the  terminal  ports  of  the  Sandy  and  Beaver  Canal  was 
some  forty  miles,  but  this  stretch  was  increased  to  sixty  by 
the  necessity  of  following  the  watercourses  and  dodging  hills. 
The  engineering  difficulties  were  serious.  For  eight  years 
after  the  incorporation  of  the  company  the  project  languished, 
and  it  was  not  until  the  end  of  1834  that  ground  was  actually 
broken.  In  the  meantime  the  Ohio  Canal  had  been  practically 
finished,  and  a  large  part  of  the  state  was  entering  upon  a 
period  of  unprecedented  prosperity.  Wheat  went  up  from 
twenty-five  cents  to  a  dollar  a  bushel,  and  corn  and  oats  almost 
in  proportion.  Even  potatoes,  which  previously  had  been  too 
cheap  to  have  a  price,  brought  forty  cents  a  bushel. 

It  was  with  high  hopes,  consequently,  that  on  the  24th  of 
November,  1834,  New  Lisbon  celebrated  the  beginning  of  the 
great  work.  It  was  essentially  a  local  enterprise.  Some  help 
had  been  obtained  in  Philadelphia,  where  the  merchants  of  New 
Lisbon  had  wealthy  connections;  but  most  of  the  money  was 
subscribed  by  business  men  of  the  town  and  the  other  small 
places  along  the  line  of  the  canal.  Benjamin  Hanna  was 
president  of  the  company.  Leonard  Hanna  was  a  director. 
The  whole  family  invested  liberally  in  its  stock.  They  realized 
that  the  future  of  New  Lisbon  depended  upon  the  success  of  the 
undertaking. 

Even  after  ground  was  broken,  however,  progress  was  far 
from  being  uninterrupted.  Work  had  to  be  suspended  during 
the  panic  of  1837.  Reorganization  was  necessary ;  and  to  facili- 
tate it  Benjamin  Hanna  turned  over  half  of  his  stock  in  the  old 
corporation  to  the  new  one.  After  a  delay  of  some  years  work 
was  resumed,  and  finally  in  1846  the  canal  was  actually  finished. 
On  October  26  the  first  boat  made  the  voyage  from  the  Ohio 
River  to  New  Lisbon  ;  and  the  jubilation  of  the  citizens  of  that 


THE    PASSING   OF   NEW   LISBON  31 

town,  was  not  apparently  diminished  by  the  fact  that  the 
boat  stuck  in  the  mud  and  had  to  be  hauled  to  its  dock,  not 
only  by  horse  and  oxen,  but  by  the  willing  arms  of  a  large 
number  of  enthusiastic  citizens.  The  event  was  properly  cele- 
brated in  a  spacious  warehouse,  which  Benjamin  Hanna 
had  built  on  the  margin  of  the  canal,  and  which  was  filled 
with  immense  stores  of  grain,  wool  and  produce  for  shipment 
to  the  Ohio. 

The  canal  was  a  failure  almost  from  the  start.  The  section 
between  New  Lisbon  and  the  Ohio  River  was  operated  with  some 
success  for  a  while,  and  large  shipments  of  wool  and  pork 
were  profitably  made  to  Pittsburgh.  But  the  rest  of  the  canal 
was  a  frank  fizzle.  It  was  too  difficult  a  problem  for  the  local 
engineers.  West  of  New  Lisbon  two  tunnels  had  to  be  cut 
through  the  hills,  one  of  which  was  three-quarters  of  a  mile  long. 
The  number  of  locks  made  the  cost  of  maintenance  impossibly 
high,  and  scarcity  of  water  rendered  it  necessary  to  dam  sev- 
eral creeks  and  rivers  and  to  build  two  large  reservoirs.  The 
work  was  hastily  and  badly  done.  The  banks  were  always 
caving  in,  and  the  dams  breaking.  Water  was  frequently 
lacking.  It  is  said  that  only  one  boat  ever  made  the  complete 
passage,  and  that  boat  was  forced  through  by  the  contractors, 
so  as  to  qualify  for  certain  payments  under  their  contract. 

The  effect  of  this  failure  upon  the  fortunes  of  New  Lisbon  and 
the  Hanna  family  was  disastrous.  Not  only  was  the  country-side 
drained  of  its  accumulated  capital,  but  it  was  deprived  of  means 
of  recovering  from  the  loss.  Two  million  dollars  had  been  sunk 
in  the  ditch,  of  which,  according  to  Kersey  Hanna,  his  father 
and  brothers  had  supplied  no  less  than  $200,000.  All  of  this 
money  was  hopelessly  lost.  Even  that  section  of  the  canal 
between  New  Lisbon  and  the  Ohio  was  not  operated  for  more 
than  a  few  years.  Its  trade  was  killed  by  the  competition 
of  the  incoming  railroads  —  a  form  of  transportation  which 
the  citizens  of  New  Lisbon  had  resolutely  and  insistently 
diverted  from  their  town.  By  1852  the  Fort  Wayne  and  the 
Cleveland  and  the  Pittsburgh  roads  were  already  being  operated 
through  Columbiana  County,  but  at  some  distance  from  New 
Lisbon.  The  town  was  side-tracked.  The  canal  of  great  hopes 
was  abandoned.  New  Lisbon  ceased  to  be  the  trading  centre 


32         MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

of  the  district.     There  was  nothing  for  an  ambitious  man  to  do 
except  to  get  out. 

When  overtaken  by  this  disaster  Benjamin  Hanna  was  too 
old  a  man  to  move  and  make  another  start.  He  died  in  1853, 
and  left  his  children  an  abundance  of  land  but  very  little  personal 
property.  His  sons  were  young  enough  to  begin  again.  Joshua 
Hanna  moved  to  Pittsburgh  and  became  a  banker.  Leonard  and 
Robert  Hanna  started  off  in  the  opposite  direction  for  Cleveland, 
where,  in  company  with  a  fellow-townsman,  Hiram  Garretson, 
they  founded  a  grocery  and  commission  business.  They  were 
followed  or  accompanied  by  the  other  brothers.  In  a  few 
years  all  the  Hanna  family  had  deserted  New  Lisbon. 

Mark,  then  a  lad  of  fifteen,  accompanied  his  parents  to  Cleve- 
land, but  after  his  removal  he.  remained  tied  to  New  Lisbon 
by  one  of  the  strongest  of  bonds.  He  had  asserted  his  indepen- 
dence and  the  maturity  of  his  years  by  an  engagement  of 
marriage  with  a  young  lady  named  Mary  Ann  McLain.  His 
suit  was  discouraged  from  the  start  by  his  own  family ;  but  his 
parents  were  apparently  either  unable  or  unwilling  absolutely 
to  forbid  it.  Mark  certainly  regarded  himself  as  regularly 
and  definitely  engaged.  During  many  years  he  often  revisited 
New  Lisbon,  in  order  to  see  his  sweetheart,  and  presumably  to 
play  around  with  his  former  companions.  A  boy  who  was  so 
much  of  a  boy  was  bound  to  have  a  love-affair ;  and  in  the  case 
of  a  boy  who  was  being  treated  by  his  parents  as  so  much  of  a 
man,  the  love-affair  naturally  threatened  serious  responsi- 
bilities. 

It  speaks  well  for  his  fidelity  in  his  personal  relations  that 
this  pseudo-engagement  lasted  for  nine  years.  During  that 
whole  period  he  continued  to  go  to  New  Lisbon  whenever  he 
could ;  and  whenever  he  came,  he  brought  with  him  an  armful 
of  presents  —  including,  so  it  is  said,  dresses.  Evidently  after 
living  in  Cleveland  he  was  not  satisfied  with  the  fashions  of 
New  Lisbon  or  Mary's  ability  to  live  up  to  them.  His  ideas 
about  the  apparel  and  the  behavior  of  women  were  presum- 
ably changing;  and  his  attachment  to  Mary,  which  dated 
probably  almost  from  childhood,  was  being  strained.  He  was 
always  gay  and  sociable,  and  he  always  instinctively  sought 
the  society  of  people  of  the  same  temper  and  habit.  Mary  ap- 


THE    PASSING   OF   NEW  LISBON  33 

parently  was  shy,  awkward  and  not  at  all  lively.  The  relation 
could  not  last. 

But  the  way  the  end  was  reached  testifies  both  to  the  good 
judgment  of  Mark  Hanna's  mother  and  to  Mark's  own  frank 
courage.  Mary  was  invited  to  pay  a  visit  to  the  Hanna  home  in 
Cleveland.  She  accepted  and  it  proved  to  be  her  undoing. 
Mary  felt  uncomfortable  and  out  of  place  in  the  brilliant  society 
of  such  a  metropolis  as  Cleveland.  She  either  refused  to  bear 
Mark  company  in  his  engagements  among  his  new  friends,  or 
if  she  did  she  made  an  indifferent  showing.  It  is  said  that  when 
Mary  returned,  she  realized  that  she  and  Mark  could  never 
be  married;  and  New  Lisbon  firmly  believed  that  Samantha 
Hanna  had  arranged  the  visit,  in  order  that  both  of  the  young 
couple  might  have  their  eyes  opened. 

Whether  the  event  was  due  to  diplomacy  or  accident,  the 
inevitable  result  soon  followed.  Mark  made  up  his  mind  that 
an  end  must  be  made  of  it ;  and  when  his  decision  was  once 
reached,  he  did  not  shirk  its  unpleasant  consequences.  He 
went  to  New  Lisbon  and  told  Mary  face  to  face  that  it  was  all 
over.  The  poor  child  tdok  her  sentence  hard,  but  she  is  said 
to  have  admitted  its  justice.  As  for  Mark,  a  boy  could  hardly 
have  behaved  better  than  he  did  in  the  matter  of  an  early  and 
mistaken  attachment  to  a  girl.  He  was  faithful  for  many  years ; 
he  was  both  kind  and  generous ;  he  evidently  tried  hard  to  make 
a  place  for  his  boyish  attachment  in  the  midst  of  a  new  and 
different  life;  and  when  he  failed,  he  got  out  of  his  false 
situation  as  manfully  as  he  could.  Evidently  his  parents 
respected  his  attachment,  and  instead  of  arousing  his  resent- 
ment by  uncompromising  opposition,  they  had  enough  con- 
fidence in  his  good  sense  to  allow  him  to  extricate  himself. 
Even  at  the  age  of  eighteen  or  nineteen  he  was  evidently  very 
much  his  own  master,  and  had  won  the  right  to  take  care  of 
himself.  His  self-assertion  when  a  schoolboy  against  the  ex- 
cessive authority  of  his  teacher,  Miss  Converse,  was  bearing  its 
natural  fruits. 

None  the  less  the  incident  did  not  leave  a  pleasant  impression 
on  Mark  Hanna's  mind.  The  visit  during  which  he  broke 
with  Mary  was  his  last  appearance  in  New  Lisbon  in  almost 
thirty  years.  He  did  not  return  until  1890,  and  since  this  next 


34        MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

visit  was  a  sort  of  memorial  pilgrimage  of  a  successful  man  of 
fifty-three  to  the  haunts  of  his  youth,  some  incidents  connected 
with  it  may  be  mentioned  here.  Mr.  Hanna  was  accompanied 
on  the  trip  by  his  wife,  his  mother,  his  daughter  Ruth,  his  sister 
Miss  Lillian  Hanna,  now  Mrs.  S.  Prentiss  Baldwin,  his  sister 
Mrs.  Henry  S.  Hubbell  and  her  husband,  Miss  Helen  Converse, 
his  mother's  sister,  and  Howard  Melville  Hanna.  They  came 
in  a  private  car,  and  occupied  pretty  much  the  whole  of  the  inn 
kept  by  an  Englishman  named  "  Billy  "  Bradbury.  They  visited 
the  old  house  on  the  hill,  found  that  to  their  recollection  the 
rooms  had  shrunk  in  size,  and  discovered  a  closet,  in  which 
Mark  had  been  confined  by  his  mother  for  some  boyish  mis- 
deed until  his  father  returned  and  released  him.  While  near 
the  house  they  came  upon  an  aged  man  who  was  holding  his 
horse  while  it  grazed  upon  the  grass  back  of  the  old  homestead. 
Thinking  that  he  looked  like  the  man  who  used  to  drive  the 
stage  between  New  Lisbon  and  Wellsville,  Mark  Hanna  called 
to  him  and  asked,  "Do  you  remember  me?"  The  man  looked 
at  him  indifferently  and  replied,  "No,  I  don't."  Not  to  be 
discouraged,  Mr.  Hanna  continued,  pointing  to  his  brother, 
"This  is  Melville  and  I  am  Mark  Hanna."  "You  don't 
say  so,"  the  old  man  answered  without  the  slightest  trace  of 
interest.  "And  how's  business  your  way?" 

"Billy"  Bradbury,  the  hotel-keeper,  was  something  of  a 
character,  and  he  and  Mr.  Hanna  evidently  soon  became  great 
friends.  "One  day,"  says  Mr.  Bradbury,  "Mr.  Hanna  was 
sitting  in  the  office,  and  eight  couples  in  single  rigs  drove  up. 
They  had  come  from  Salem,  ten  miles  away,  to  see  the  new  rail- 
way bridge.  Three  of  the  young  fellows  put  their  horses  in  the 
barn ;  the  other  five  were  not  so  particular  and  contented 
themselves  with  any  post  they  could  find  vacant  in  the  street. 
Presently  the  whole  eight  couples  walked  into  the  hotel,  and 
sat  down  upstairs  in  the  parlor ;  but  when  supper  was  ready, 
only  those  who  had  their  horses  in  the  barn  came  down  to  eat. 
'Say,  landlord,'  one  of  them  asked,  'do  you  know  why  those 
fellows  and  their  girls  aren't  eating?  Because  they  have  not 
got  the  price.'  Mr.  Hanna  heard  what  was  said,  laughed  and 
said  to  me:  'Billy,  go  upstairs,  and  bring  them  all  down  to 
supper.  Bring  the  boys  and  the  girls,  and  if  the  boys  won't 


THE   PASSING   OF   NEW   LISBON  35 

come,  bring  the  girls,  and  feed  their  horses.  I'll  pay  the  bill." 
So  he  did,  and  no  one  was  the  wiser.  When  the  bill  was  pre- 
sented after  a  visit  of  three  days  it  came  to  $80.  The  landlord 
received  a  check  for  $100  and  was  told  to  keep  the  change. 
Naturally  he  swears  by  Mark  Hanna. 


CHAPTER  V 

EARLY   YEARS   IN    CLEVELAND 

IN  April,  1852,  Leonard  Hanna  and  his  brother  Robert  left 
New  Lisbon  and  started  on  their  new  business  career  in  Cleveland. 
They  were  accompanied  by  Hiram  Garretson,  a  fellow-towns- 
man of  Quaker  parentage,  and  about  whom  we  know  at  least 
that  he  was  a  man  of  impressive  personal  appearance.  At 
one  time  he  represented  his  country  at  an  international  exposi- 
tion in  Vienna.  Before  the  formal  opening  he  joined  a  number 
of  minor  European  potentates  in  a  special  inspection  of  the 
exposition.  In  describing  this  royal  procession  the  London 
Times  is  reported  to  have  said  that  the  most  regal-looking  man 
in  the  group  was  the  American  Commissioner  Hiram  —  which 
was  not  so  bad  for  a  Cleveland  grocer.  He  and  his  partners 
apparently  had  little  difficulty  in  starting  a  business,  which  soon 
became  sufficiently  profitable  to  support  them  and  their  families. 
The  family  of  Leonard  Hanna  had  not  accompanied  him  to 
Cleveland  in  the  spring  of  1852.  They  joined  him  in  the  fall 
of  the  same  year,  after  the  business  had  been  well  established, 
and  moved  into  a  substantial  brick  house  on  Prospect  Street, 
between  Granger  and  Cheshire  streets. 

The  fact  that  Mark  considered  himself  engaged  to  be  married 
was  not  allowed  to  interfere  with  the  more  immediately  necessary 
business  of  going  to  school.  His  education  was  continued 
during  some  four  years  and  a  half.  One  of  the  public  schools 
which  he  attended  was  situated  on  Brownell  Street,  then  called 
Clinton  Street.  Later  he  studied  at  the  Central  High  School, 
which  stood  on  the  site  now  occupied  by  the  Citizens'  Savings 
and  Trust  Co.  John  D.  and  William  Rockefeller  were  among 
his  schoolmates,  the  former  being  about  Mark's  own  age. 
Finally  his  education  was  finished  by  an  attendance  of  a  few 
months  at  the  Western  Reserve  College.  Nothing  of  any  im- 
portance is  remembered  about  his  life  during  these  years  — 

36 


EARLY  YEARS  IN  CLEVELAND  37 

except  the  reason  for  the  early  termination  of  his  career  at 
college. 

An  interesting  account  of  this  incident  is  supplied  by  Mr. 
Hanna  himself.  In  a  speech  delivered  on  the  seventy-fifth  anni- 
versary of  the  founding  of  the  college,  June  13,  1901,  he  tells 
the  story  so  well  that  his  account  deserves  to  be  repeated  in 
full.  He  said  on  that  occasion,  in  the  easy  colloquial  manner 
characteristic  of  his  public  speaking:  "I  am  neither  a  student 
nor  a  scholar,  and  it  is  with  diffidence  I  address  this  audience. 
My  connection  with  the  Western  Reserve  College  reaches  back 
as  far  as  1857.  I  had  finished  my  education  at  the  public 
schools,  and  I  had  a  choice  of  going  to  work  or  attempting  a 
college  course.  My  mother  persuaded  me  to  try  the  latter. 
Western  Reserve  College  at  '  Hudson '  was  near  at  hand,  and 
there  I  went.  I  entered  what  was  called  the  scientific  class, 
in  which  a  kind-hearted  professor  made  things  easy  for  me. 
There  were  five  members  of  the  class  when  I  entered  it.  Later 
the  numbers  dwindled  to  three,  and  when  I  left  there  was  not 
any. 

"My  environment  was  largely  responsible  for  my  going.  At 
my  boarding  house  I  fell  in  with  a  number  of  jolly  sophomores, 
and  they  persuaded  me  to  help  them  in  getting  out  a  burlesque 
program  of  the  Junior  oratoricals.  In  the  division  of  labor  it 
fell  to  my  lot  to  distribute  these  mock  programs.  I  well  remem- 
ber when  the  iron  hand  of  Professor  Young  fell  on  my  shoulder. 
' Young  man/  he  said,  'what  are  you  doing?'  'I  am  dis- 
tributing literature  and  education/  I  replied, '  at  the  expense  of 
the  Junior  class/  Well,  it  was  near  the  end  of  the  term,  any- 
way, and  I  went  home.  I  told  my  mother  I  thought  that  I 
would  go  to  work,  and  that  I  was  sure  the  faculty  would  be  glad 
of  it.  A  little  while  after  I  met  President  Hitchcock  on  Superior 
Street.  I  was  in  jumper  and  overalls,  for  I  was  working.  He 
asked  me  what  I  was  doing,  and  I  told  him  'working/  He 
didn't  say  anything,  but  his  eyes  and  manner  said  very  elo- 
quently that  he  thought  I  had  struck  the  right  level.  And  the 
moral  of  that  story  is,  boys,  'Don't  be  ashamed  of  overalls.' " 

The  penalty  of  expulsion  or  even  suspension  looks  unneces- 
sarily severe  for  such  a  harmless  joke.  In  order  to  account 
for  it,  the  reader  must  understand  the  high  importance  of  the 


38         MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

Junior  "  oratoricals "  among  the  intellectual  festivities  of  a  year 
of  the  Western  Reserve  College.  It  was  the  great  feature  of 
the  college  term  —  more  important  even  than  the  commence- 
ment exercises.  Every  member  of  the  Junior  class  was  expected 
to  "oratorical" ;  and  at  the  same  time  the  collegiate  honors, 
which  were  to  be  distributed  among  the  class  a  year  later,  were 
indicated  and  practically  announced. 

Mr.  Geo.  H.  Ford,  classmate  of  Mark  Hanna's,  tells  the  story 
of  the  episode  in  the  following  words  :  "  The  'affair7  occurred 
April,  1859.1  The  Junior  class  of  that  year  was  unusually  large 
and  above  the  average  in  talent.  In  it  were  several  Cleve- 
landers.  I  remember  W.  W.  Andrews,  son  of  Judge  Sherlock 
J.  Andrews,  as  one  of  them,  and  John  F.  and  Henry  V.  Hitch- 
cock, sons  of  the  president  of  the  college.  The  faculty  was 
justly  proud  of  this  class,  but  certain  of  its  individual  members 
had  put  on  'airs/  and  the  lower  classmen  resented  it,  Hanna 
among  the  rest.  The  coming  '  exhibition '  was  looked  forward 
to  with  great  local  interest.  The  program  was  prepared  secretly, 
and  to  prevent  accidents  was  sent  to  Cleveland  to  be  printed. 
Hanna  saw  an  opportunity  of  removing  a  little  of  their  conceit, 
so  he  went  to  Cleveland,  got  on  good  terms  with  some  one  in 
the  printing  office,  secured  a  proof  of  the  program,  and  forwarded 
it  to  his  fellow-conspirators  in  Hudson.  A  racy  burlesque  or 
sham  program  was  prepared  and  returned  to  him,  which  he  had 
printed  in  elegant  style  and  sent  back.  I  think,  although 
I  am  not  sure,  he  also  managed  to  suppress,  or  get  possession  of 
the  genuine  programs,  and  to  forward  a  bundle  of  the  shams 
by  express  to  the  class  on  the  morning  of  the  exhibition,  too  late 
for  a  remedy.  The  shams  were  thoroughly  distributed  through- 
out the  audience  in  the  crowded  chapel  by  boys  enlisted  by  his 
co-conspirators. " 

Mr.  Ford  does  not  believe  that  Mark  was  expelled.  He  was 
merely  reprimanded  severely  by  the  faculty,  indefinitely 
suspended  and  his  return  made  conditional  on  a  promise  of 
good  behavior.  He  adds  that  Mark  Hanna  was  easily  a  captain 
among  the  boys  of  his  age  in  college  —  frank,  fearless  and  ener- 

1  This  is  a  mistake.  Mr.  Hanna  could  scarcely  have  been  21  years  old 
when  lie  entered  college.  He  entered  in  1857.  The  joke  was  played  in 

1858. 


MARK  HANNA  AS  A  LAD  OP  EIGHTEEN 


EARLY  YEARS  IN  CLEVELAND  39 

getic,  full  of  fun  and  always  ready  to  play  harmless  jokes  on  his 
companions.  Once  when  a  local  fire  company  was  making  a 
blundering  attempt  to  extinguish  a  fire  near  the  college  campus, 
he  quickly  collected  thirty  or  forty  boys,  charged  on  the  firemen, 
took  the  extinguisher  away  from  them,  seized  the  nozzle  of  the 
hose  with  his  own  hands,  climbed  to  the  roof  of  the  house,  and 
remained  there  until  the  fire  was  put  out. 

Obviously  Mark  Hanna's  suspension  was  the  occasion  of  his 
quitting  college  rather  than  the  cause.  After  he  had  finished 
with  the  high  school,  his  own  preference  was  for  an  immediate 
plunge  into  business,  and  in  going  to  college  he  was  merely 
making  a  temporary  concession  to  the  wishes  of  his  mother. 
He  could  make  the  concession  out  of  respect  for  his  mother,  but 
at  the  first  check  his  own  will  prevailed.  His  parents  had 
allowed  him  a  good  deal  of  independence,  and  he  was  accustomed 
to  act  for  himself.  All  his  deeper  instincts  urged  him  to  begin 
his  career  in  business.  The  fact  that  he  considered  himself 
engaged  to  be  married  would  alone  have  been  sufficient  to  make 
the  idea  of  a  long  college  course  irksome.  Life  itself  was 
beckoning  to  him.  Why  potter  over  books,  when  there  were 
real  things  to  do  ? 

From  his  own  point  of  view  he  made  the  right  decision.  He 
would  have  gained  little  from  a  college  training.  He  was  never 
interested  in  books.  He  never  learned  much  out  of  books. 
Even  at  high  school  his  progress  must  have  been  slow,  or 
he  would  have  been  ready  for  college  before  he  was  twenty 
years  old.  By  disposition  and  training  he  was  the  true  product 
of  a  pioneer  society,  in  which  an  active  life  without  any 
artificial  preliminary  discipline  is  the  efficient  life,  and  in  which 
the  action  adopted  is  determined  by  the  economic  environment. 
Inasmuch  as  he  was  destined  to  be  a  business  man,  the  sooner 
he  began,  the  better.  Experience  was  his  one  possible  source  of 
real  education,  and  his  experience  could  become  edifying  only 
as  the  result  of  actual  experiment.  While  he  had  little  ability 
to  learn  at  second  hand  from  books,  he  had  or  came  to  have  a 
gift  for  learning  from  his  own  successes  and  failures,  and  so  for 
adapting  himself  to  the  needs  of  his  own  career. 

The  business  carried  on  by  Hanna,  Garretson  &  Co.,  into 
which  Mark  Hanna  entered  in  the  spring  of  1858,  afforded  an 


40        MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WOKK 

excellent  schooling  for  an  energetic  and  intelligent  young  man. 
Nominally  they  were  only  wholesale  grocers,  but  a  wholesale 
grocery  in  Cleveland  fifty  years  ago  inevitably  tended  to 
become  a  general  forwarding  and  commission  business.  Cleve- 
land was  at  that  time  just  beginning  to  reap  the  advan- 
tage of  its  situation  on  Lake  Erie  at  the  most  convenient 
point  for  the  control  of  the  shipping  and  the  trade,  other 
than  grain,  of  the  Great  Lakes.  During  the  fifties  both 
Wisconsin  and  Minnesota  were  beginning  to  be  settled,  and 
because  of  the  Lakes  many  of  the  needs  of  the  pioneer 
population  of  these  states  could  be  supplied  most  economically 
by  water  in  the  boats  of  the  merchants  of  a  conveniently 
situated  city  like  Cleveland.  Hanna,  Garretson  &  Co.  were 
apparently  one  of  the  first  firms  to  anticipate  the  possibilities 
of  this  trade.  They  began  early  to  extend  their  business  into 
the  Lake  Superior  region.  In  order  to  make  their  deliveries, 
they  established  a  line  of  steamboats  which  carried  passengers 
as  well  as  freight,  and  for  which  return  cargoes  had  to  be  found. 
And  their  return  cargoes  even  at  this  early  date  were  prophetic 
of  the  product,  for  which  the  upper  Lake  region  was  later  to 
become  conspicuous.  The  pioneers  of  Minnesota  wanted  to 
sell,  not  grain  or  hogs,  but  pig-copper,  iron  ore  and  salt  fish. 
Hanna,  Garretson  &  Co.  used  in  this  part  of  their  business  the 
Manhattan,  one  of  the  first  steamboats  regularly  operated  on  the 
Lakes,  and  later  the  City  of  Superior  and  the  Northern  Lights. 

Hiram  Garretson  spent  much  of  his  time  in  New  Orleans, 
buying  the  sugar  and  molasses,  which  was  sold  to  their  cus- 
tomers in  Ohio  and  along  the  Lakes,  and  which  was  still  shipped 
to  Cleveland  by  way  of  the  Ohio  River  and  canal.  Leonard 
and  Robert  Hanna  remained  in  Cleveland  and  took  care  of  the 
selling  end  of  the  business.  When  Mark  Hanna  left  college, 
his  business  experience  began,  as  he  himself  says,  in  jumpers 
and  overalls.  He  started  as  a  general  rustabout  on  the  docks, 
and  as  a  clerk  in  the  warehouse  on  Mervin  Street.  His  work  was 
the  same  as  that  of  any  other  young  man  in  and  about  the  store. 

He  was  soon,  however,  given  a  more  responsible  job.  He  did 
not  remain  in  the  warehouse  much  longer  than  enough  to  obtain 
a  speaking  acquaintance  with  that  aspect  of  the  business.  His 
first  outside  assignment  was  that  of  purser  on  one  of  the  vessels 


EARLY  YEARS  IN  CLEVELAND  41 

for  a  season,  whereby  he  obtained  some  knowledge  of  the  Lake 
Superior  country  and  the  conditions  of  trade  and  transporta- 
tion on  the  Great  Lakes.  Still  later  he  went  out  as  a  salesman. 
The  firm  sold  groceries  in  many  towns  in  northern  Ohio.  It 
was  not  at  that  time  customary  to  solicit  business,  but  Mark 
was  occasionally  commissioned  to  start  out  and  find  customers. 
His  brother,  Leonard  C.  Hanna,  believes  him  to  have  been  one 
of  the  first  commercial  travellers  in  the  United  States  —  which  is 
a  distinction  of  a  kind.  He  was  no  more  afraid  of  the  sample- 
case  than  he  was  of  the  overalls.  All  accounts  agree  that  he 
was  from  the  beginning  an  exceedingly  successful  salesman. 

Although  business  interested  the  young  Mark  Hanna  much 
more  than  books,  he  did  not  in  the  beginning  apply  himself  to 
business  with  anything  like  the  exclusive  devotion  which  charac- 
terized the  early  career  of  his  fellow-townsman  and  grocer,  Mr. 
John  D.  Rockefeller.  He  was  still  wise,  not  beyond  his  years, 
but  according  to  his  years.  He  was  not  quite  ready  to  settle 
down  to  serious  work.  He  was  more  than  anything  else  a 
young  man  who  wanted  to  enjoy  himself  after  the  manner  of 
other  young  men.  He  was  by  disposition  gay,  expansive  and 
sociable.  He  eagerly  sought  and  shared  everything  which 
Cleveland  had  to  offer  by  way  of  sport  and  amusement.  He 
joined  the  Ydrad  Boat  Club,  of  which  he  became  captain.  The 
club  owned  a  long  racing  boat,  and  it  used  to  row  exciting 
races  with  its  rival,  the  Ivanhoe  Boat  Club.  He  never  cared 
particularly  for  horse-racing ;  but  all  his  companions  liked  it,  and 
he  would  join  them  because  he  did  not  want  to  be  left  behind. 
Although  an  enthusiastic  card-player,  he  rather  avoided  poker. 
He  was  a  conspicuous  figure  at  dances  and  parties  of  all  kinds, 
and  he  particularly  enjoyed  certain  excursions  to  Rocky  River 
for  dinner,  which  he  himself  used  to  get  up  among  his  young 
friends  of  both  sexes.  He  spent  a  great  deal  of  time  and  money 
on  these  sports  and  diversions.  In  fact,  he  is  said  usually  to  have 
paid  more  than  his  share  of  the  expenses,  and  certain  members 
of  his  family  assuredly  thought  that  he  was  also  spending  more 
than  a  proper  share  of  his  time.  He  does  not  appear  to  have 
had  any  peculiarly  intimate  friendships  as  a  young  man,  but 
he  knew  everybody,  enjoyed  general  popularity  and  was  one  of 
the  leaders  among  the  young  people  of  Cleveland. 


42         MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

Apparently  his  amusements  interfered  with  his  business 
career  —  at  least  in  the  opinion  of  some  of  his  elders.  His 
brother,  H.  M.  Hanna,  states  that  Uncle  Robert  used  to  complain 
about  the  number  of  Mark's  social  engagements,  and  of  the 
consequent  expense.  But  this  was  merely  the  unsympathetic 
criticism  of  a  young  man  by  an  elder  of  different  disposition. 
Mark  was  temporarily  intoxicated  with  the  wine  of  youth. 
If  he  had  refused  the  cup,  he  might  have  made  and  saved 
more  money,  but  he  certainly  would  have  been  less  of  a  man. 
The  love  of  sport,  combat  and  amusement  was  in  his  blood, 
and  in  giving  free  expression  to  them  in  his  youth,  he  was 
behaving,  as  he  always  did,  in  a  natural  and  a  wholesome  way. 
Be  it  added  that  his  gayety  was  innocent  in  intention  and 
harmless  in  its  results.  Both  of  his  brothers  testify  that  his 
youth  was  exemplary.  As  a  young  man  he  never  even 
touched  beer  and  whiskey,  and  he  sowed  no  wild  oats. 

Soon,  however,  vicissitudes  in  the  life  both  of  his  family  and 
his  country  diminished  his  amusements  and  increased  his 
responsibilities.  Not  long  after  Mark  went  to  work  his  father's 
health  began  to  fail.  At  about  the  same  time  Ohio  and  the 
North  were  in  a  ferment,  first  over  a  threat  of  civil  war  and 
finally  by  its  outbreak.  Suddenly  Mark  Hanna  found  him- 
self confronted  by  the  work  and  duties  of  a  man. 

The  death  of  Leonard  Hanna  was  the  result  of  the  accident 
which  had  been  one  cause  of  the  abandonment  of  his  professional 
career.  The  fall  which  he  had  received  while  mounting  his  horse 
had  injured  his  spine.  At  the  time  the  injury  was  supposed  to  be 
slight,  and  the  only  resulting  inconvenience  was  a  tendency  to 
headaches.  Later,  however,  these  headaches  became  more 
frequent  and  more  painful.  They  were  localized  at  the  very 
top  of  his  spine,  and  he  could  obtain  relief  only  by  the  applica- 
tion of  very  hot  cloths  to  the  back  of  his  neck  for  hours  at  a 
time.  As  the  headaches  increased  in  number  and  severity,  an 
operation  was  tried,  and  some  of  the  nerves  of  the  neck  were  cut. 
Thereafter  the  pains  vanished,  but  his  general  health  steadily 
declined.  He  died  finally  from  the  degeneration  of  the  tissues 
of  a  part  of  the  brain. 

The  illness  which  resulted  in  the  death  of  Dr.  Leonard 
Hanna  on  Dec.  15,  1862,  had  disqualified  him  for  business 
throughout  the  two  preceding  years.  During  that  interval 


EARLY  YEARS  IN  CLEVELAND  43 

Mark  Hanna  gradually  stepped  into  his  father's  place.  He  was 
the  eldest  son,  and  the  one  on  whom  the  responsibility  naturally 
fell.  He  represented  the  interests  of  his  mother  and  brothers 
in  the  business,  and  practically  became  a  partner.  In  fact,  even 
before  his  father's  death  the  firm  was  reorganized,  and  Mark 
Hanna  entered  it.  A  difference  of  opinion  had  arisen  between 
Robert  Hanna  and  Hiram  Garretson  about  the  conduct  of  the 
business.  Garretson  wanted  to  add  to  the  trade  of  the  firm  a 
liquor  department,  because  it  was  in  liquor  that  the  largest 
profits  were  to  be  made.  Robert  and  Leonard  Hanna  refused 
on  account  of  their  temperance  convictions.  Late  in  1862,  as 
a  result  of  this  disagreement,  Hiram  Garretson  withdrew  from 
the  firm ;  and  on  December  1  of  that  year  the  following  notice 
was  published  in  the  Cleveland  Herald: 

Cleveland  Herald,  Dec.  1,  1862. 
R.  Hanna,  L.  Hanna,  S.  H.  Baird,  M.  A.  Hanna, 

Robert  Hanna  &  Co. 

(Successors  to  Hanna,  Garretson  &  Co.), 

Wholesale  Grocers,  Forwarding  and 

Commission  Merchants, 

and  Dealers  in 
Produce,  Fish,  Salt,  etc.,  etc. 

Central  Exchange, 

Nos.  169  and  171  River  St.,  and  Dock, 
Cleveland,  Ohio. 

Agents  for 

Cleveland,  Detroit  and  Lake  Superior 
Line  of  Steamers. 

Notice.  M.  B.  Clark  and  John  D.  Rockefeller,  late  of  Clark, 
Gardner  &  Co.,  will  continue  the  Produce  Commission  business 
under  style  and  firm  of  Clark  &  Rockefeller,  at  warehouse  re- 
cently occupied  by  Clark,  Gardner  &  Co.,  Nos.  39,  41,  43  & 
45  River  Street. 

This  notice  was  published  two  weeks  before  the  death  of 
Dr.  Leonard  Hanna,  so  that  Mark  Hanna  was  soon  the  only 
representative  of  his  immediate  family  in  the  partnership. 
Somewhat  later  his  brother,  Howard  Melville,  bought  out  the 
interest  of  S.  H.  Baird.  Dr.  Hanna  bequeathed  little  to  his 


44         MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

family  except  his  share  of  the  business,  and  that,  of  course,  went 
to  his  widow  for  the  support  of  the  home  and  the  younger  chil- 
dren. The  boys  received  practically  nothing  from  their  father's 
estate. 

The  situation  of  the  family  before  and  after  his  brother's 
death  determined  Mark  Hanna's  behavior  in  respect  to  en- 
listing for  the  war.  As  a  courageous,  patriotic  and  combative 
young  man,  whose  friends  were  going  to  the  front,  Mark  would 
have  inevitably  enlisted,  but  he  was  prevented  by  his  duty  to 
his  family.  Some  one  had  to  remain  in  Cleveland,  so  as  to  man- 
age his  mother's  interest  in  the  grocery  business.  The  choice  lay 
between  Mark  and  his  younger  brother,  Howard  Melville.  They 
talked  it  over,  and  agreed  that  Mark's  longer  experience  in  the 
business  designated  him  for  service  at  home.  His  brother  en- 
listed in  the  navy  and  served  with  honor  and  distinction. 

At  a  later  date  Mark  Hanna  did  serve  for  a  short  time,  and 
he  himself  has  given  a  brief  account  of  the  incident.  Speaking 
at  the  camp-fire  of  the  Grand  Army  of  the  Republic  on  the  night 
of  Sept.  12,  1901  (while  President  McKinley's  life  still  hung 
in  the  balance),  he  said  :  "This  is  my  first  visit  to  a  camp-fire. 
As  you  all  know,  I  have  been  one  of  you  but  a  short  while. 
To  the  question  why  I  did  not  exercise  my  right  to  be  enrolled, 
I  will  say  that  I  never  supposed  I  was  entitled  to  stand  with 
the  men  who  were  veterans  of  four  years'  terrible  war.  I  am 
but  a  four  months'  man.  IiTl861  I  might  have  enlisted,  but 
circumstances  prevented  me.  My  father  was  on  a  sick  bed. 
I  did  the  best  I  could.  I  sent  a  substitute.  Four  years  later 
I  had  the  honor  to  be  drafted.  We  did  have  a  brush  with  Gen- 
eral Early,  but  that  was  all.  For  that  reason  I  did  not  think  I 
was  entitled  to  become  one  of  your  comrades." 

This  account  of  his  service  is  rather  an  under-  than  an  over- 
statement of  his  participation  in  the  war.  He  had  joined  a 
company  of  militia  known  as  the  Perry  Light  Infantry,  which 
later  became  a  company  in  the  29th  regiment  of  the  Ohio  Na- 
tional Guard.  In  the  spring  of  1864,  when  the  government  was 
straining  every  resource  to  deal  to  the  Confederacy  a  crushing 
blow,  the  29th  regiment  of  the  National  Guard  together  with  a 
company  of  farmers  from  Dover  in  Cuyahoga  County  and  a 
company  of  students  from  Oberlin  College  were  mustered  into  the 


EARLY  YEARS  IN  CLEVELAND  45 

Federal  service  as  the  150th  regiment  of  the  Ohio  Volunteer  In- 
fantry. The  date  of  their  entry  into  the  service  was  May  5,  and 
one  week  later  it  took  train  from  Cleveland  for  Washington. 

The  Perry  Light  Infantry,  composed  mostly  of  young  Cleve- 
land business  men,  became  Company  C  in  the  new  volunteer 
regiment.  It  had  been  commanded  by  Capt.  W.  H.  Hayward, 
who  was  elected  colonel  of  the  new  organization.  This  left 
Company  C  without  a  captain.  The  first  lieutenant  of  the 
Light  Infantry  was  made  captain  of  Company  C;  and  when 
a  further  election  was  held  to  fill  the  position  of  first  lieutenant, 
E.  B.  Thomas,  who  was  serving  as  first  sergeant,  received  a  ma- 
jority of  the  votes,  although  Mark  Hanna,  who  had  been  second 
lieutenant  of  the  Light  Infantry,  had  a  prior  claim  on  the  posi- 
tion. After  a  consultation  E.  B.  Thomas  refused  to  muster  in 
as  first  lieutenant  and  was  never  commissioned  as  such.  Mark 
Hanna  served  through  the  hundred  days  as  first  lieutenant, 
although  he  was  commissioned  only  as  second  lieutenant. 

The  regiment  was  sent  to  Washington  as  a  substitute  for  the 
troops  which  had  been  withdrawn  from  the  defences  of  the 
city  by  General  Grant  in  order  to  help  him  in  the  campaign 
in  the  Wilderness.  Its  members  were  marched  out  of  the  city 
and  assigned  to  garrison  duty  in  forts  Lincoln,  Thayer, 
Saratoga,  Slocum,  Bunker  Hill,  Slemmer,  Totten  and 
Stevens.  The  "brush  with  Early "  mentioned  in  Mr.  Hanna's 
speech  occurred  on  July  10  and  11.  General  Early  was 
threatening  Washington,  and  all  available  troops  were  being 
rushed  to  the  fortifications  for  its  defence.  But  the  attack 
never  developed  into  anything  dangerous ;  and  such  as  it  was, 
it  did  not  fall  upon  that  part  of  the  Federal  line  at  which  Lieu- 
tenant Hanna's  company  was  stationed.  It  was  concentrated 
on  Fort  Stevens,  which  was  separated  from  Fort  Bunker  Hill, 
where  Company  C  was  quartered,  by  Forts  Slemmer,  Totten 
and  Slocum.  Company  C  was  not  under  fire. 

Mark  Hanna  himself  was  not  even  with  his  regiment  on  the 
day  when  the  Confederates  made  their  feint  at  the  defences  of 
Washington.  He  had  been  assigned  to  return  to  Cleveland 
with  the  dead  body  of  a  comrade,  and  the  "brush  with  Early  " 
occurred  during  the  time  occupied  by  his  return  journey.  In 
a  letter  written  from  Baltimore,  where  he  was  detained  on  the 


46        MAKCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

journey,  he  expressed  lively  chagrin  at  being  absent  from  the 
only  military  " excitement"  in  which  his  regiment  was  involved. 

Although  the  regiment  saw  no  service  worth  the  name,  it  was 
well  drilled,  and  in  every  way  thoroughly  prepared  for  the  field. 
The  emergency  which  had  called  it  out  soon  passed,  and  on 
August  13  it  was  returned  safely  to  Cleveland  after  a  disa- 
greeable journey  in  a  train  of  cattle  cars.  On  August  23  it  was 
mustered  out,  having  served  for  one  hundred  and  ten  days. 
Jay  C.  Morse  and  George  W.  Chapin,  later  to  become  brothers- 
in-law  of  Mark  Hanna,  were  sergeants  in  Company  C,  and  Ed- 
ward 0.  Wolcott,  subsequently  Senator  of  the  United  States 
from  Colorado,  and  George  K.  Nash,  subsequently  governor  of 
Ohio,  were  privates  in  other  companies.  The  historian  of  the 
regiment,  'Major'  Gleason,  refers  to  Lieutenant  Hanna  as  a 
"jolly,  auburn-haired,  freckle-faced  youth,"  while  his  lieu- 
tenant-colonel, John  N.  Frazee,  supplies  the  following  de- 
scription: "Lieutenant  Hanna  must  have  been  six  feet  or  over 
in  height,  weighing  from  160  to  180  pounds ;  complexion  fair, 
full-faced,  with  side  whiskers ;  full-chested,  square-shouldered ; 
in  fact  a  very  manly  man  and  thoroughly  conscientious  in  the 
discharge  of  his  duties." 

At  the  time  of  his  service  in  the  fortifications  of  Washington, 
Mark  Hanna  was  not  so  much  interested  in  the  defence  of  his 
country  as  he  might  have  been.  Or  rather  he  was  interested  in 
something  else  very  much  more.  He  was  at  that  moment  head 
over  heels  in  love,  and  just  before  starting  for  the  front  his  love- 
affair  had  developed  into  a  recognized  engagement.  To  leave 
Cleveland  at  such  a  crisis  was  exasperating  to  a  young  man  who 
had  been  obliged  to  overcome  obstacles  before  he  was  accepted 
as  suitor  for  the  lady's  hand ;  and  during  the  whole  of  his  en- 
forced absence  he  was  more  preoccupied  with  the  end  of  his 
service  than  with  its  duties  and  opportunities.  As  he  was  to 
be  married  soon  after  his  return,  he  counted  the  days  which  he 
had  still  to  wait,  and  was  not  happy  until  the  orders  were  given 
for  the  journey  back  to  Cleveland.  His  wedding  did  take  place 
a  few  weeks  after  he  was  mustered  out  of  the  service;  and 
we  must  now  turn  to  the  series  of  incidents  which  culminated 
in  his  marriage,  and  the  no  less  important  series  of  incidents 
which  were  its  immediate  consequences. 


CHAPTER  VI 

MARRIAGE   AND   ITS   RESULTS 

THE  lady  to  whom  Mark  Hanna  was  married  in  September, 
1864,  was  Miss  C.  Augusta  Rhodes.  They  had  met  at  arbazaar 
in  the  spring  of  1862,  just  after  Miss  Rhodes  had  returned  from 
a  finishing  school  in  New  York  City.  On  that  occasion  Mark 
had  won  the  favor  both  of  mother  and  daughter  by  helping  them 
out  of  an  embarrassing  situation.  An  acquaintance  followed, 
and  the  two  young  people  promptly  fell  in  love  with  each  other. 
Mark  was  an  eligible  suitor,  and  there  was  no  good  reason  why 
an  engagement  should  not  have  immediately  followed.  But 
when  Miss  Rhodes's  father  was  approached,  he  met  the  suitor 
with  a  peremptory  and  probably  an  explosive  negative. 

Mrs.  Hanna  gives  two  reasons  to  account  for  the  opposition. 
Her  father,  Mr.  Daniel  P.  Rhodes,  a  coal  and  iron  merchant  and 
one  of  Cleveland's  most  successful  business  men,  was  a  vigorous 
and  self-willed  man.  Behind  his  opposition  was  apparently 
the  instinctive  repugnance  which  certain  fathers  have  to  the 
marriage  of  their  children ;  but  of  course  he  had  what  appeared 
to  be  a  better  reason  at  the  end  of  his  tongue.  He  did  not  want 
his  daughter  to  marry  Mark  Hanna  because  he  did  not  like  the 
young  man's  politics  —  which  is  not  such  a  bad  reason  at  a 
time  when  differences  of  political  opinion  were  deluging  the 
country  with  blood.  Daniel  P.  Rhodes  was  a  strong  Democrat, 
and  unlike  many  of  his  partisan  associates  in  the  Middle  West, 
he  was  more  of  a  Democrat  than  he  was  a  unionist.  Stephen 
A.  Douglas  was  distantly  related  to  him,  and  he  had  taken  an 
intense  interest  in  Douglas's  political  career.  The  defeat  of  his 
favorite  in  1860  so  embittered  him  that  he  could  not  forgive  the 
Republicans,  who  brought  it  about.  He  used  to  say  to  the 
young  suitor,  "I  like  you  very  well,  Mark,  but  you  are  a 
damned  screecher  for  freedom." 

The  order  was  issued  that  the  two  young  people  should  be 

47 


48         MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

kept  apart ;  but  it  was  an  order  easier  to  issue  than  to  execute. 
Mark  was  captain  of  the  Ydrad  Boat  Club,  and  both  conspicu- 
ous and  ubiquitous  in  Cleveland  society.  The  order  to  keep 
Miss  Rhodes  away  from  her  lover  was  equivalent  to  an  order 
for  her  to  stay  at  home.  She  was  forbidden  to  attend  the  dances 
given  during  the  winter  by  the  Boat  Club,  an  enforced  isolation 
which  increased  her  unhappiness.  Mark  does  not  appear  to 
have  been  absolutely  forbidden  the  house,  but  his  visits  were 
discouraged,  and  he  saw  Miss  Rhodes,  if  at  all,  only  under 
surveillance. 

For  a  long  time  the  young  suitor  appeared  to  make  no  head- 
way. Daniel  Rhodes  was  really  in  earnest,  and  he  was  not  the 
man  to  yield  except  under  compulsion.  In  a  country  where 
the  exercise  of  parental  authority  is  sanctioned  by  public  opin- 
ion the  opposition  might  have 'proved  fatal,  but  in  the  land  of 
freedom  a  way  is  usually  found  to  bend  a  stubborn  parent  to 
the  will  of  his  offspring.  Mark  Hanna  was  as  obstinate  a  man 
as  Daniel  Rhodes,  and  he  was  armed  with  the  swords  both  of 
Passion  and  of  Righteousness.  He  persisted.  Miss  Rhodes 
was  very  unhappy.  She  pleaded  and  wept.  Her  health  suf- 
fered. There  was  no  telling  what  might  happen.  Daniel 
Rhodes  had  no  peace  at  home  or  abroad.  Finally  he  yielded. 
Before  Mark  started  for  Washington  the  engagement  was  rec- 
ognized, and  on  Sept.  27,  1864,  he  was  married  to  Miss 
Rhodes  in  St.  John's  Church  —  the  groom  being  a  little  over 
twenty-seven  years  old  and  the  bride  twenty-one.  The  day 
of  the  ceremony  Daniel  Rhodes  said  to  the  triumphant  groom, 
"It's  all  over  now,  Mark,  but  a  month  ago  I  would  like  to  have 
seen  you  at  the  bottom  of  Lake  Erie." 

Daniel  Rhodes  may  have  consoled  himself  for  the  loss  of  a 
daughter  by  the  idea  that  he  had  acquired  a  son.  After  the 
marriage  he  did  his  best  to  keep  the  young  couple  near  him  and 
under  his  thumb.  When  they  returned  from  their  wedding 
trip  Mark  Hanna  and  his  wife  lived  for  a  while  in  the  Rhodes 
mansion  on  Franklin  Avenue,  and  more  than  a  year  elapsed 
before  they  set  up  an  establishment  of  their  own.  Early  in 
1866  they  moved  into  a  small  house  on  Prospect  Street,  in  spite 
of  the  opposition  of  Mr.  Rhodes ;  but  their  move  towards  in- 
dependence was  not  a  success.  The  young  couple  had  one  dif- 


MARK  HANNA  IN  1864 


MARRIAGE   AND   ITS   RESULTS  49 

ficulty  after  another,  and  in  the  end  they  were  forced  to  sub- 
mit to  the  will  of  the  obstinate  Mr.  Rhodes. 

In  December,  1866,  their  first  child  was  born  and  was  named 
Daniel  Rhodes  Hanna,  after  the  dominant  father-in-law.  ^  A  few 
months  later  Mark  Hanna  was  seized  with  an  acute  attack  of 
typhoid  fever  —  the  malady  which  was  subsequently  to  cause 
his  death.  He  was  desperately  sick,  but  being  young  and 
strong,  he  pulled  through.  While  he  was  still  struggling  against 
the  depressing  after  effects  of  his  illness,  he  met  with  business 
reverses.  Robert  Hanna  and  Co.  had  built  a  new  boat,  the 
Lac  la  Belle,  which  is  said  to  have  been  the  best  vessel  on  the 
Lakes.  It  appears  that  Mark  Hanna  had  an  individual  in- 
terest in  her  as  well  as  his  share  of  the  firm's  interest.  After 
only  a  short  period  of  service  she  collided  with  another  boat  in 
the  Detroit  River,  and  went  to  the  bottom  —  a  total  loss. 

Nor  was  this  all.  Soon  after  his  marriage  Mark  Hanna  had 
started  a  petroleum  refinery.  It  was  a  new  industry.  The 
buildings  were  small  and  the  business  uncertain.  Insurance 
companies  looked  askance  at  the  risk.  According  to  his  daugh- 
ter's account  Daniel  Rhodes  was  violently  opposed  to  his  son- 
in-law's  enterprise,  not  merely  because  he  did  not  like  the  pre- 
cariousness  of  the  venture,  but  because  he  wanted  Mark  Hanna 
to  join  him  in  the  coal  and  iron  business.  Every  time  he  heard 
the  fire  bells  he  would  say :  "There  !  I  suppose  Mark's  damned 
oil  refinery  is  burning  down."  His  constant  repetition  of  this 
remark  finally  became  a  family  joke.  But  one  day  it  did  burn 
down,  and  at  that  time  Mark  Hanna,  while  he  was  up  and 
about  after  his  attack  of  typhoid,  was  still  far  from  well.  He  did 
not  get  home  until  two  o'clock  in  the  morning.  When  he  came  in, 
he  said :  "Well,  I  have  got  to  the  bottom.  The  boat  is  sunk, 
the  refinery  is  burnt  and  worse  still,  my  health  is  gone.  If  I 
were  well,  I  would  not  be  discouraged.  As  it  is,  I  don't  know 
what  will  become  of  us."  Early  the  next  morning  Daniel 
Rhodes  turned  up  at  the  house  on  Prospect  Street,  walked  in  and 
greeted  the  happy  pair  with  the  admonition:  "Now,  I  guess 
you  two  young  fools  will  be  good  and  come  home."  They 
meekly  acquiesced,  and  that  very  day  they  returned  to  the 
Rhodes  house  on  Franklin  Avenue.  The  father-in-law  stood  by, 
while  they  packed  up,  and  consoled  the  young  man  with  the 


50         MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

reiterated  remark,  "Your  money  is  all  gone,  Mark,  and  I  am 
damned  glad  of  it."  For  the  moment  there  was  no  fight  left 
in  Mark.  It  was  arranged  that  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Rhodes  were  to 
go  abroad,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hanna  were  to  keep  house  in  Franklin 
Avenue,  and  at  the  same  time  make  a  home  for  Mrs.  Hanna's 
brother,  Robert  R.  Rhodes. 

The  new  domestic  arrangement  involved  also  a  new  start  in 
business  for  Mark  Hanna.  Daniel  Rhodes  wanted  to  retire. 
The  old  firm  of  Rhodes,  Card  &  Co.  was  dissolved.  Jonathan 
F.  Card  withdrew  as  well  as  Daniel  Rhodes,  and  a  wholly  new 
firm,  to  be  called  Rhodes  &  Co.,  was  to  take  their  place.  The 
members  of  this  firm  were  George  H.  Warmington,  M.  A.  Hanna 
and  Robert  R.  Rhodes,  the  brother  of  Mrs.  Hanna.  Rhodes 
&  Co.  started  business  in  April,  1867,  and  so  began  Mark 
Hanna's  connection  with  the  coal  and  iron  industry,  which  was 
to  last  throughout  his  life. 

The  organization  of  the  copartnership  of  Rhodes  &  Co. 
involved  the  withdrawal  of  Mark  Hanna  from  the  firm  of 
Robert  Hanna  &  Co.,  but  it  is  improbable  that  Mark  had  many 
regrets  on  that  score.  The  Hanna  firm  had  been  strengthened 
after  the  war  by  the  accession  of  Howard  Melville,  Mark's 
brother ;  and  apparently  the  younger  men  did  not  get  on  very 
well  with  their  uncle.  He  is  described  as  a  large,  heavy  man  with 
good  business  judgment,  and  an  excellent  salesman,  but  lacking 
in  energy  and  enterprise.  After  his  marriage  Mark  had  begun 
to  take  business  in  earnest.  He  wanted  to  expand  their  trade 
rapidly,  introduce  a  more  vigorous  campaign  for  the  sale  of 
stock,  and  improve  their  methods  and  machinery  all  along  the 
line.  His  plans  were  continually  being  thwarted  by  his  uncle, 
who,  as  the  elder  man,  was  naturally  conservative.  There  were 
many  disagreements.  The  partnership  would  probably  not  in 
any  event  have  endured  very  long,  and  if  Mark  Hanna  had 
continued  to  be  a  grocer,  he  would  either  have  controlled  the 
business  or  started  a  competitive  firm.  As  it  was,  he  withdrew 
at  the  time  of  the  formation  of  Rhodes  &  Co.,  and  later  in  the 
same  year  the  business  was  wound  up  and  the  stock  sold  to  a 
competitor. 

Although  Mark  Hanna  probably  felt  little  reluctance  in 
terminating  his  partnership  with  his  uncle,  he  had  not  been  by 


MARRIAGE   AND   ITS   RESULTS  51 

any  means  eager  to  enter  the  firm  which  was  to  take  over  his 
father-in-law's  business.  Not  only  was  the  coal  and  iron  trade 
an  unfamiliar  country  to  him,  but  he  was  loath  to  abandon  his 
petroleum  refinery.  He  believed  that  large  profits  were  to  be 
made  in  oil,  and  as  the  event  proved,  he  was  right.  But  in  ad- 
dition to  reasons  connected  with  the  nature  of  the  businesses 
he  abandoned  and  was  asked  to  undertake,  personal  issues 
were  involved.  His  father-in-law  had  opposed  his  marriage, 
and  in  the  beginning  had  scoffed  at  his  business  ability.  He 
would  much  have  preferred  to  keep  his  independence  and  make 
good  without  his  father-in-law's  assistance.  Had  he  not  met 
with  a  series  of  reverses,  he  would  in  all  probability  have  con- 
tinued to  operate  the  oil  refinery,  with  the  result  of  profoundly 
modifying  his  subsequent  business  career. 

As  it  was,  Mr.  Rhodes  seems  to  have  offered  his  son-in-law 
very  considerable  inducements  to  enter  the  firm  of  Rhodes  & 
Co.  He  had  come  to  have  much  more  respect  for  the  young 
man's  business  ability,  and  Mark  entered  the  firm  under  most 
advantageous  conditions.  The  refinery,  which  was  rebuilt,  and 
in  which  Mark's  mother  had  a  substantial  interest,  was  sold 
later  in  1867  to  his  brother,  Howard  Melville.  Mr.  Hanna  ran 
the  business  in  partnership  with  his  brother-in-law,  Geo.  W. 
Chapin,  under  the  name  of  Hanna  &  Chapin.  A  couple  of 
years  later  it  was  sold  on  advantageous  terms  to  the  Standard 
Oil  Company. 

How  his  subsequent  business  career  would  have  been  modi- 
fied, in  case  he  had  become  an  ally  of  the  Rockefellers,  is  mere 
speculation,  but  it  is  a  kind  of  speculation  too  tempting  to 
ignore.  A  man  of  Mr.  Hanna's  energy  and  business  ability  could 
hardly  have  joined  the  forces  of  the  Standard  Oil  Company  with- 
out becoming  conspicuous  in  its  management ;  and  every  man 
prominently  identified  with  that  company  was  induced  by  the 
consequent  opportunities  of  money-making  and  by  the  nature 
of  the  business  to  leave  his  native  town  and  go  to  New  York. 
Mark  Hanna  might  well  have  done  the  same,  and  if  so,  his 
subsequent  political  career  would  have  become  impossible.  He 
would  have  made  more  money,  but  he  would  have  broken  the 
local  ties  which  enabled  him  to  develop  from  a  business  man 
into  a  political  leader.  The  Standard  Oil  Company  proved  to  be 


52         MAECUS  ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND  WORK 

the  most  generous  paymaster  in  the  business  history  of  the  United 
States,  if  not  of  the  world,  but  it  demanded  of  its  beneficiaries 
the  rupture  of  local  associations  and  the  sacrifice  of  extraneous 
ambitions. 

All  unconsciously  Mark  Hanna  escaped  the  danger,  if  danger 
it  was,  of  becoming  too  rich,  and  on  April  1,  1867,  he  made  a 
new  start  on  what  proved  to  be  his  ultimate  business  career. 
At  that  time  he  was,  according  to  the  statement  of  his  brother- 
in-law  and  temporary  partner,  Mr.  Robert  R.  Rhodes,  worth 
some  thousands  of  dollars  less  than  nothing.  He  had  gained 
little  from  the  first  nine  years  of  his  business  life  except  experi- 
ence. He  had  ignored  the  rule  laid  down  by  Mr.  John  D.  Rocke- 
feller as  constituting  the  sure  road  to  business  success.  He  had 
not  pinched  and  saved,  and  devoted  himself  exclusively  to  his 
work.  He  was  human  enough  to  want  a  good  time  while  he 
was  young,  and  he  had  not  scrupled  to  take  it.  In  the  mean- 
while he  had  been  seeking  business  success,  as  a  young  man 
naturally  would,  by  the  road  of  new  enterprises,  such  as  the 
oil  refinery  and  the  Lac  la  Belle.  The  subsequent  history  of  the 
oil  and  the  lake  shipping  industries  prove  that  in  making  these 
ventures,  his  business  judgment  was  sound.  But  his  luck  was 
not  as  good  as  his  judgment,  and  his  business  strategy  provided 
no  method  of  retreat.  When  his  boat  and  his  refinery  were 
consumed  by  the  elements,  which  they  were  intended  to  exploit, 
he  had  no  reserve  capital  with  which  to  repair  his  losses.  The 
Rockefeller  rule  would  have  insured  him  against  such  a  calamity, 
but  fortunately  he  had  saved  something  better  than  an  insur- 
ance fund.  He  had  saved  his  youth,  and  he  kept  his  youth  with 
him. 

In  1867,  however,  he  was  thirty  years  old.  If  he  was  still 
to  be  wise  according  to  his  years,  he  no  longer  had  the  same  ex- 
cuse for  vagrancy.  He  was  happily  married.  His  children  were 
being  born.  His  father-in-law  believed  in  him  and  had  given 
him  an  interest  in  a  well-established  and  prosperous  business. 
He  felt  the  need  of  making  good.  For  the  first  time  his  energies 
were  absorbed  by  his  career.  He  began  to  put  himself  into  his 
work.  Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  one  of  his  partners  was 
his  elder  in  years  and  his  superior  in  experience  and  that  the 
other  was  the  son  of  the  founder  of  the  business,  Mark  Hanna 


MARRIAGE   AND   ITS   RESULTS  53 

rapidly  became  the  leading  member  of  the  firm.  The  will  to 
succeed  in  any  enterprise  which  he  undertook  and  to  dominate 
any  group  of  men  with  whom  he  was  associated  lay  deep  in  his 
disposition.  It  now  began  to  receive  a  persistent  and  effective 
expression.  During  the  next  twenty-seven  years  he  was  more 
than  anything  else  a  man  of  business.  He  labored  unceasingly 
and  efficiently  to  build  up  Rhodes  &  Co.,  until  under  the  name 
of  M.  A.  Hanna  &  Co.  it  became  a  highly  individual  business 
organization  and  one  of  the  two  or  three  largest  firms  in  the 
coal  and  iron  trade  of  the  Ohio  lake  district. 


CHAPTER   VII 

BUSINESS   LIFE   IN    CLEVELAND 

IN  Mr.  Robert  R.  Rhodes's  statement  describing  his  business 
relations  with  Mark  Hanna  and  the  latter's  business  charac- 
teristics, Mr.  Rhodes  has  explained  in  the  following  words  the 
success  of  Rhodes  &  Co.:  "Mark  Hanna  was  a  shrewd  man. 
Much  of  the  credit  for  the  prosperity  of  Rhodes  &  Co.  must  at- 
tach to  his  individual  efforts.  But  my  idea  about  the  success 
of  the  firm,  aside  from  Mr.  Hanna's  personal  contribution  to  it, 
is  that  we  took  over  the  business  at  an  opportune  time.  Eco- 
nomic conditions  offered  us  unusual  opportunities  for  growth. 
We  started  at  the  right  moment."  It  is  essential,  consequently, 
to  an  understanding  of  Mark  Hanna's  business  career  that  some 
account  be  given  of  the  economic  conditions  and  opportunities, 
which  confronted  Cleveland  business  men  in  the  decade  or  two 
immediately  succeeding  the  war. 

When  Dr.  Leonard  Hanna  moved  to  Cleveland  in  1852,  it 
was  a  small  but  thriving  city,  containing  a  little  over  20,000 
inhabitants.  Its  rapid  growth  had  been  due  to  its  situation 
on  Lake  Erie  at  the  northern  terminus  of  the  Ohio  Canal. 
Produce  of  all  kinds,  originating  not  merely  in  Ohio,  but  along 
the  Ohio  and  Mississippi  rivers,  were  shipped  by  river  and  canal 
to  Cleveland,  which  became  an  important  distributing  and 
collecting  agency  for  the  district  reached  by  the  Great  Lakes. 
Agricultural  staples  were  sent  to  the  terminus  of  the  Erie  Canal 
at  Buffalo  —  either  for  Eastern  consumption  or  for  export.  The 
pioneer  settlements  in  the  Northwest  were  supplied  with  the 
few  necessaries  they  could  afford  to  purchase,  and  their  prod- 
ucts were  carried  to  markets  farther  east.  Its  business,  con- 
sequently, was  commercial  rather  than  industrial,  and  depended 
for  its  growth  chiefly  upon  the  increasing  importance  of  the 
Great  Lakes  in  the  American  system  of  transportation. 

During  the  fifties  the  volume  of  lake  commerce  increased  by 
leaps  and  bounds,  chiefly  because  of  the  rapid  settlement  of  the 

54 


BUSINESS   LIFE   IN   CLEVELAND  55 

region  in  the  Northwest  tributary  to  the  Great  Lakes.  The 
population  of  Cleveland  more  than  doubled  during  the  decade, 
and  its  industry  and  commerce  not  only  throve,  but  became 
much  more  diversified.  Nevertheless,  even  in  1860  its  popula- 
tion was  less  than  one-fourth  that  of  Cincinnati,  and  the  con- 
ditions which  account  for  its  present  place  in  the  national  com- 
mercial system  were  barely  beginning  to  be  conspicuous.  The 
great  trade  routes  still  lay  along  the  navigable  rivers  like  the 
Ohio  and  Mississippi,  and  the  combination  of  lake  and  rail- 
road transportation,  which  was  to  constitute  the  backbone  of 
American  domestic  commerce,  had  not  yet  been  formed. 

The  Civil  War  accelerated  the  predestined  change  in  com- 
mercial routes.  Navigation  of  the  Mississippi,  except  for  mili- 
tary purposes,  suddenly  ceased.  The  bond  between  the  South 
and  the  agricultural  states  of  the  Middle  and  Northwest  was 
cut.  The  tide  of  commerce  began  running  east  and  west.  The 
railroads  and  the  Lakes  took  the  place  of  the  rivers  and  the  canals. 
Chicago  as  the  distributing  and  collecting  centre  for  the  rapidly 
growing  states  tributary  to  the  head  waters  of  the  Mississippi 
and  Missouri  leaped  into  its  position  as  the  leading  commercial 
and  industrial  city  of  its  own  region.  Its  enormous  increase 
in  population  and  business  was  due  chiefly  to  the  benefit  which 
it  obtained  from  the  agricultural  development  of  the  West  and 
the  Northwest  —  a  benefit  dependent  more  upon  its  railroad 
connections  than  its  situation  on  Lake  Michigan,  but  partly 
on  both. 

Cleveland  had  little  to  gain,  except  indirectly,  from  the  increase 
in  the  grain  trade  and  the  new  course  it  was  taking ;  and  it  had 
less  to  gain  than  had  Chicago  from  the  growing  importance  of 
railroad  transportation.  Its  peculiar  place  in  American  do- 
mestic commerce  depended  upon  its  central  and  convenient 
location  on  the  Lakes.  It  needed  the  railroads  chiefly  as 
supplementary  to  water  routes.  Its  great  opportunity  came 
when  the  industrial  expansion  of  the  Middle  West  created  a  de- 
mand for  crude  manufacturing  materials,  adapted  to  trans- 
portation in  bulk.  Its  merchants  assembled  the  basic  materials 
necessary  to  the  industrial  life  of  the  Middle  West.  They 
brought  coal  from  the  mines  in  Ohio  and  western  Pennsylvania, 
and  sold  it  in  the  different  markets  on  or  near  the  Lakes.  They 


56        MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

transported  the  iron  ore  and  pig  copper  which  was  already  being 
produced  in  considerable  quantities  in  the  upper  Lake  region 
to  the  furnaces  and  factories  south  and  southeast  of  Lake  Erie. 
They  built  the  vessels  needed  for  this  constantly  increasing 
commerce.  Ship  building  gradually  became  their  most  im- 
portant single  industry,  but  this  complicated  branch  of  manu- 
facturing brought  many  subordinate  industries  with  it.  Cleve- 
land has  always  been  remarkable  for  the  diversity  of  its 
manufacturing  interests  and  the  wholesome  balance  of  its  eco- 
nomic life. 

When  Mark  Hanna  entered  the  firm  of  Rhodes  &  Co.  in 
1867,  the  commercial  and  industrial  revolution  roughly 
sketched  above  was  still  in  its  infancy.  The  Middle  West, 
and  particularly  the  state  of  Ohio,  had  passed  out  of  its  period 
of  pioneer  agriculture,  but  it  was  just  beginning  its  period  of  in- 
dustrial pioneering.  Of  course  many  experiments  had  already 
been  made,  and  many  local  industries  had  already  been  founded. 
But  these  industries  had  depended  upon  means  of  transporta- 
tion which  were  now  being  superseded,  and  consequently  the 
conditions  of  industrial  success  in  the  Middle  West  were  being 
turned  upside  down.  A  piece  of  industrial  and  commercial 
patch-work  had  to  be  converted  to  an  organic  system,  not  only 
well  articulated  within,  but  properly  adapted  to  the  national 
economic  system.  It  was  a  world  of  industry  and  commerce 
in  the  making,  and  offered  extraordinary  opportunities  to  an 
enterprising,  aggressive,  energetic,  quick-witted,  flexible  and 
indomitable  man. 

The  business  which  Rhodes  &  Co.  took  over  from  Rhodes, 
Card  &  Co.  was  well  established,  but  its  development  was  only 
embryonic.  The  bulk  of  its  business  consisted  in  the  mining 
and  selling  of  coal,  —  an  industry  with  which  Daniel  P.  Rhodes 
had  been  associated  from  the  start.  As  early  as  1845  the  Brier- 
hill  mine,  near  Youngstown,  Ohio,  had  been  opened  up  by  Mr. 
Rhodes  and  David  Tod.  Their  output  was  some  fifty  tons  of 
bituminous  coal  a  week,  which  was  gradually  increased  and 
which  was  brought  to  Cleveland  by  canal  until  1856,  when  the 
completion  of  the  Cleveland  and  Mahoning  Railroad  gave  the 
trade  a  great  impetus.  Soon  after,  the  opening  of  the  Cleveland 
and  Pittsburg  Railroad  made  the  coal-fields  of  Columbiana 


MARK  HANNA  ABOUT  1871 


BUSINESS   LIFE    IN   CLEVELAND  57 

County  accessible;  and  in  1860  the  great  Massillon  district, 
with  which  Mr.  Hanna's  firm  became  closely  identified,  was 
opened  for  production.  By  1867  the  railroad,  steamboat  and 
manufacturing  industries  in  and  about  Cleveland  were  already 
justifying  the  shipment  of  some  600,000  or  700,000  tons  of  coal 
a  year  to  that  market. 

While  the  mining  and  sale  of  their  own  coal  constituted  a 
considerable  part  of  the  initial  business  of  Rhodes  &  Co.  in 
1867,  it  by  no  means  constituted  the  whole  of  it.  The  firm  also 
owned  a  furnace  and  some  iron  properties  at  Canal  Dover  in 
the  Tuscawaras  district;  and  it  sold  its  own  pig-iron  and  its 
own  ore.  Furthermore  it  carried  on  a  considerable  commission 
business  in  all  these  products,  and  it  was  on  the  whole  more  in- 
terested in  the  selling  than  it  was  in  the  operating  aspect  of  its 
several-sided  business.  Under  the  management  of  Mr.  Hanna 
and  his  new  partners  it  did  not  change  in  that  respect.  Indeed 
little  by  little  it  became  more  than  ever  a  commission  business. 
Whenever  either  the  firm  or  its  individual  members  became 
interested  in  the  production  of  coal,  of  iron  ore  or  of  pig-iron 
it  was  chiefly  for  the  purpose  of  securing  material  which  could 
be  sold  by  Rhodes  &  Co. 

The  kind  of  business  described  above  was  admirably  adapted 
to  the  peculiar  business  abilities  of  Mark  Hanna.  He  was  not 
the  man  to  work  patiently  and  persistently  in  building  up  stone 
by  stone  the  structure  of  a  particular  industry.  He  liked  di- 
versity of  occupation  and  work,  constant  movement  and  the 
excitement  of  new  undertakings.  The  business  of  Rhodes  & 
Co.  developed,  consequently,  not  along  any  one  line,  but  along 
many  lines.  It  became  fundamentally  a  selling  agency  for  a 
variety  of  products ;  and  as  a  selling  agency  it  could  transact 
a  much  larger  business  on  a  certain  amount  of  capital  than  it 
could  if  it  were  handling  only  the  output  of  its  iron  furnaces 
or  mines. 

At  the  same  time  every  possible  precaution  was  taken  to 
provide  against  the  dangers  to  which  a  mere  commission  busi- 
ness was  exposed  —  the  danger  of  losing  control  of  the  product 
sold.  In  order  to  become  certain  of  being  able  to  handle  as 
agent  large  quantities  of  coal,  iron  ore  and  pig-iron,  Rhodes  & 
Co.,  either  as  a  firm  or  by  the  action  of  its  individual  members, 


58        MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

extended  widely  its  interests  in  mines,  furnaces  and  later  in 
means  of  transportation.  It  did  not  always  own  a  mine  or  a 
furnace  outright,  but  an  interest  in  many  such  enterprises  was 
purchased  —  always  with  the  understanding  that  the  product 
should  be  sold  through  Rhodes  &  Co.  This  method  of  creating 
business  for  Rhodes  &  Co.  as  a  selling  agency  became  more  and 
more  an  essential  part  of  the  policy  of  the  firm. 

During  the  days  of  Robert  Hanna  &  Co.,  Mark  Hanna  had, 
as  we  have  seen,  been  much  interested  in  the  Lake  Superior 
ore  country.  After  the  dissolution  of  the  firm  his  brother, 
Howard  Melville  Hanna,  continued  to  conduct  a  forwarding 
and  commission  business  in  the  products  and  supplies  of  that 
district.  It  was  natural,  consequently,  for  Mark  Hanna  to 
extend  the  business  of  Rhodes  &  Co.  into  such  a  familiar  region. 
He  added  to  the  connections  of  the  firm  a  number  of  iron  mines 
in  the  Northwest;  and  little  by  little  he  obtained  control  of 
the  sale  of  most  of  the  charcoal  iron  produced  in  the  district. 
This  innovation  made  an  essential  change  in  the  scope  and 
the  balance  of  the  firm's  business.  Its  interests,  instead  of  being 
confined  almost  exclusively  to  Ohio,  were  established  in  a  strong 
position  on  the  great  highway  of  American  domestic  commerce. 

The  extension  into  the  Lake  Superior  district  was  immedi- 
ately followed  by  another  development  in  the  firm's  business, 
which  also  naturally  followed  from  Mark  Hanna's  early  expe- 
rience. The  connection  built  up  with  the  Lake  Superior  dis- 
trict soon  involved  the  firm  in  the  transportation  as  well  as  the 
sale  of  iron  ore  and  coal.  Rhodes  &  Co.,  or  its  partners  in- 
dividually, acquired  interests  in  every  aspect  of  the  handling 
and  the  transport  of  the  products,  which  they  sold  on  commis- 
sion. 

No  other  extension  of  the  business  of  the  firm  did  so  much  as 
did  its  early  interest  in  lake  transportation  to  fortify  its  position 
and  enable  it  to  reap  the  full  advantage  of  its  opportunities. 
The  place  of  Cleveland  in  the  economic  system  of  the  Middle 
West  was,  as  I  have  said,  primarily  commercial.  It  was  ex- 
cellently situated  for  the  handling,  the  collection  and  the  dis- 
tribution of  the  basic  materials  of  industrial  production,  but  its 
situation  placed  it  at  a  disadvantage  in  shipping  finished  prod- 
ucts to  the  markets  either  in  the  East  or  the  West.  Its  manu- 


BUSINESS   LIFE    IN   CLEVELAND  59 

factures  have,  indeed,  always  been  diversified  and  thrifty; 
and  the  Cleveland  Rolling  Mills  Company  was  early  one  of 
the  most  progressive  and  prosperous  manufacturers  of  finished 
steel  products  in  the  United  States.  But  as  a  producer  of 
steel  the  Cleveland  district  has  never  competed  except  in 
a  small  way  with  Chicago  or  the  Pittsburgh  district.  Con- 
sequently in  obtaining  an  interest  so  early  in  the  sale,  the  trans- 
port and  the  handling  of  the  basic  materials  necessary  to  the 
iron  and  steel  industries,  Rhodes  &  Co.  established  themselves 
under  Mark  Hanna's  direction  near  the  heart  of  Cleveland's 
growth  and  prosperity. 

The  extension  of  the  business  of  Rhodes  &  Co.  mentioned 
above  was  effected  soon  after  Mark  Hanna's  entrance  into  the 
firm.  Before  1870  a  regular  iron  ore  transport  service  was 
established,  in  which  were  interested,  not  only  Rhodes  &  Co., 
but  the  three  partners  individually  and  Howard  Melville 
Hanna.  For  many  years  Melville  Hanna  was  associated  with 
his  brother  in  many  ship-operating  and  ship-building  enter- 
prises, although  this  association  did  not  include  the  other  branches 
of  Mark  Hanna's  business.  Melville  Hanna  was  an  expert  in 
both  the  technical  and  the  commercial  aspects  of  lake  trans- 
portation and  his  cooperation  was  invaluable. 

Another  useful  associate  in  his  early  venture  in  the  trans- 
portation of  iron  ore  was  the  Cleveland  Iron  Mining  Company. 
This  corporation  was  one  of  the  largest  shippers  of  ore  in  the  Lake 
Superior  district.  A  contract  was  made  with  the  company  for 
the  transportation  of  its  ore  for  three  years,  and  on  the  strength 
of  this  contract  four  steamers  and  four  tows  were  built  and  oper- 
ated. Each  of  the  several  partners  of  Rhodes  &  Co.,  except, 
perhaps,  Mr.  Warmington,  also  owned  and  operated  vessels 
for  his  individual  benefit.  One  ship,  owned  by  Mark  Hanna 
and  his  brother,  was  named  Leonard  Hanna  after  their  father. 
Eventually  the  Cleveland  Transportation  Company  was  or- 
ganized to  conduct  this  branch  of  the  business,  and  later  still 
the  early  association  was  dissolved  and  the  Orient  Transpor- 
tation Company  was  formed,  which  assumed  ownership,  not  only 
of  all  the  original  fleet,  but  of  a  number  of  new  vessels. 

In  the  meantime  the  other  aspects  of  the  business  were  not 
being  neglected.  Under  modern  conditions  water  transpor- 


60         MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

tation  is  only  to  a  very  small  extent  independent  of  transpor- 
tation by  rail.  It  was  just  as  essential  for  a  firm  like  Rhodes  & 
Co.  to  have  advantageous  connections  with  railroads  as  it  was 
to  control  mines  and  vessels,  for  almost  all  of  the  materials 
it  produced,  manufactured,  sold  on  commission  or  carried  by 
water  was  handled  by  a  railroad  at  some  point  of  its  transfer 
from  the  mines  or  furnaces  to  the  consumer.  The  Pennsylvania 
Railroad  Company  was  inevitably  the  corporation  with  which 
Rhodes  &  Co.  had  most  reason  to  be  closely  associated.  It  was 
the  company  which  owns  the  roadway  leading  from  the  firm's 
mines  to  Lake  Erie.  It  was  the  only  company  which  at  that 
time  could  convey  the  ore  brought  by  boat  from  Lake  Superior 
to  the  furnaces  of  western  Pennsylvania.  Close  relations  were 
consequently  established  with  this  railroad  early  in  the  seven- 
ties, and  they  have  continued  until  the  present  day.  The  firms 
of  Rhodes  &  Co.1  and  M.  A.  Hanna  &  Co.  have  always  been 
known  as  Pennsylvania  Railroad  shippers.  Of  course,  their 
business  was  not  exclusively  transacted  with  that  company, 
but  it  was  their  first  choice.  The  firm  in  which  Mr.  Hanna 
was  a  partner  has  always  stood  for  the  Pennsylvania  interest 
on  the  south  shore  of  Lake  Erie.  Mark  Hanna  himself  became 
a  director  both  of  the  Cleveland  and  Pittsburg  Railroad, 
(one  of  the  Pennsylvania's  leased  lines)  and  later  of  the  Pitts- 
burg,  Fort  Wayne  and  Chicago. 

His  firm  profited  very  much  from  this  connection.  It  leased 
the  docks  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  Company  at  Ashtabula 
on  the  south  shore  of  Lake  Erie  about  sixty  miles  east  of  Cleve- 
land, and  much  of  the  ore  shipped  from  the  Lake  Superior  dis- 

1  The  firm  continued  to  conduct  its  business  under  the  name  of 
Rhodes  &  Co.  until  1885,  but  in  the  meantime  Mr.  Hanna's  interest 
in  it  was  constantly  being  increased.  In  1875  Leonard  Colton  Hanna, 
Mark's  youngest  brother,  entered  the  firm;  and  at  about  the  same 
time  it  was  joined  by  James  Ford  Rhodes,  another  son  of  Daniel  P. 
Rhodes,  and  subsequently  the  historian  of  the  United  States  from  the 
Compromise  of  1850.  In  the  meantime  Mr.  Robert  R.  Rhodes  and 
Mr.  Warmington  retired,  and  in  1885  Mr.  James  Ford  Rhodes  also 
withdrew.  Thereafter  the  Rhodes  interest  was  eliminated,  and  the 
firm  name  became  M.  A.  Hanna  &  Co.  Mr.  A.  C.  Saunders  was  at 
one  time  admitted  to  partnership,  and  at  a  considerably  later  date, 
but  during  his  father's  life  Mr.  Daniel  Rhodes  Hanna  entered  the  firm. 


BUSINESS   LIFE   IN   CLEVELAND  61 

trict  to  western  Pennsylvania  was  handled  by  these  docks  and 
carried  to  Pittsburgh  by  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  Company. 
The  docks  were  equipped  with  ore-handling  machinery  by 
Rhodes  &  Co.,  and  they  transacted  a  very  large  business.  In 
accordance  with  its  usual  policy  of  participating  in  the  owner- 
ship as  well  as  in  the  handling  of  the  products  it  sold,  a  furnace 
was  bought  in  1879  at  Sharps ville,  Pennsylvania.  At  a  later  date 
M.  A.  Hanna  &  Co.  also  leased  and  equipped  the  Pennsylvania 
docks  both  at  Cleveland  and  at  Erie. 

The  vessels  owned  and  operated  by  the  Cleveland  Trans- 
portation Company  were,  of  course,  built  of  wood,  and  their 
tonnage  was  comparatively  small.  Vessels  carrying  twelve  or 
eighteen  hundred  tons  were  considered  to  be  good-sized  ships. 
It  was  Melville  rather  than  Mark  Hanna  who  first  reached  the 
conclusion  that  larger  vessels  should  be  built,  and  steel  substi- 
tuted for  wood.  Before  acting  on  the  conclusion  he  investi- 
gated the  matter  for  two  years,  and  employed  experts  to  help 
him  in  testing  the  practicability  of  steel  vessels  from  every 
essential  point  of  view.  When  he  was  wholly  convinced,  Melville 
and  Mark  Hanna  and  J.  F.  Pankhurst  bought  the  Globe  Ship 
Building  Company,  and  the  keel  of  the  first  steel  vessel  to  be 
navigated  on  the  Great  Lakes  was  soon  laid.  Her  name  was  the 
Cambria,  and  she  carried  twenty-six  or  twenty-seven  hundred 
gross  tons.  The  Corsica,  Coronia  and  Coralia,  which  were 
slightly  larger,  and  which  together  with  the  Cambria  were 
furnished  for  the  first  time  with  triple  expansion  engines,  soon 
followed.  These  vessels  were  specially  equipped  for  the  economi- 
cal transportation  and  handling  of  iron  ore,  and  they  were  a 
success  from  the  very  start.  They  were,  however,  so  much  of  a 
success  that  they  immediately  provoked  extensive  imitation  and 
improvement.  The  Globe  Company  obtained  orders  for  twelve 
steel  vessels  in  one  year,  and  the  transportation  methods  on 
the  Great  Lakes  were  revolutionized. 

Thus  a  very  complicated  and  diversified  business  was  gradu- 
ally built  up ;  but  diversified  as  it  was,  its  several  parts  were 
carefully  adjusted  and  tied  together.  Its  core  was  the  co- 
partnership of  Rhodes  &  Co.,  and  later  of  M.  A.  Hanna  &  Co., 
and  the  essential  purpose  of  all  the  separate  enterprises  was  to 
create  an  abundant  business  for  the  firm  as  commission  mer- 


62         MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

chants.  To  this  end  alliances  were  established  covering  every 
aspect  of  the  production,  the  handling  and  transportation  of 
the  coal,  iron  ore  and  pig-iron.  The  firm  itself  owned  coal 
mines  in  the  several  bituminous  districts  in  Ohio.  Its  indi- 
vidual partners  also  owned  mines.  In  other  cases  merely  an 
interest  had  been  purchased  in  mines  operated  independently. 
In  still  other  cases  the  coal  of  wholly  independent  operators 
was  bought  outright  and  sold.  Most  of  this  coal  was  placed 
on  the  market  in  Cleveland,  and  a  large  part  of  it  was  carried 
up  the  Lakes  in  steamers  owned  in  part  by  members  of  the 
firm  as  individuals.  The  same  methods  were  repeated  in  the 
iron  ore  district.  Iron  mines  were  owned  both  by  the  firm, 
by  its  individual  members  and  by  outsiders  to  whom  capital 
had  been  advanced.  The  firm  profited  from  the  sale  of  their 
ore,  and  frequently  from  its  handling  and  transportation,  while 
at  the  same  time  it  transported  and  sold  large  quantities  of 
ore  for  other  producers. 

The  volume  and  the  diversity  of  the  business  was  a  great  help 
to  its  economic  and  efficient  transaction.  Vessels  which  carried 
iron  ore  down  the  Lakes  could  carry  coal  back.  The  alliance 
with  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  Company  was  of  great  assist- 
ance to  the  selling  end  of  the  business.  The  large  quantities 
of  materials  sold  justified  the  development  of  one  of  the  ablest 
sales-organizations  in  the  country.  The  firm  had  unsurpassed 
opportunities  of  keeping  in  touch  with  every  aspect  of  the  coal 
and  iron  business  and  of  making  both  its  purchases  and  its 
sales  to  the  best  advantage.  Finally  it  always  consumed  a 
certain  part  of  the  raw  materials  it  produced  or  sold,  and  it 
possessed  in  this  way  a  safety  valve  for  its  business.  It  could 
either  sell  the  raw  material  or  convert  it  according  to  the  com- 
parative opportunities  of  profit.  A  large  and  increasing  part 
of  the  business  of  the  firm  consisted  of  mining  its  own  coal  and 
ore,  transporting  them  in  its  own  boats,  unloading  them  on 
docks  which  it  leases  and  operates,  and  (sometimes)  smelting  the 
ore  in  its  own  furnaces.  Pig-iron,  however,  was  its  most  finished 
product.  The  firm  never  went  into  the  manufacture  of  steel, 
although  certain  of  its  members  entered  the  directorate  of  steel- 
producing  companies  —  partly  in  order  to  secure  business  for 
the  copartnership. 


BUSINESS   LIFE    IN   CLEVELAND  63 

An  organization  of  this  kind  is  rare,  if  not  unique,  in  the  his- 
tory of  American  business.  Essentially  it  consisted  of  a  partner- 
ship, which  constituted  the  nucleus  of  a  widely  ramified  system 
of  corporate  and  firm  properties,  individual  properties,  and  per- 
sonal and  corporate  alliances.  Throughout  the  territory  em- 
braced by  the  operations  of  the  firm,  all  the  roads  led  back  to  the 
partnership  itself,  which  gathered  toll  from  the  crossing  of  every 
bridge,  the  passage  of  every  turnpike,  and  the  safe  arrival 
at  every  destination.  Yet  these  tolls  were  cheerfully  paid, 
because  the  firm  always  served  its  customers  fairly  and  effi- 
ciently, and  because  its  policy  was  never  either  grasping  or 
disloyal.  The  organization  has  the  appearance  of  being  peri- 
lously complicated,  of  being  dependent  upon  too  many  fluc- 
tuating conditions,  and  upon  too  many  merely  personal  alli- 
ances. But  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  has  stood  excellently  the  test 
of  long  and  hard  wear.  For  over  forty  years,  during  which  time 
the  conditions  of  its  business  have  been  radically  changed,  the 
firm  has  succeeded,  not  merely  in  holding  its  own,  but  in  using 
these  very  changes  to  make  its  own  position  stronger. 

Particularly  during  the  last  thirteen  years  conditions  in 
the  coal  and  iron  industry  have  not  been  favorable  to  commis- 
sion merchants.  The  tendency  has  been  to  do  away  with  the 
middleman,  and  to  organize  under  one  ownership  every  phase 
of  the  process  of  converting  iron  ore  into  finished  steel  products  ; 
but  in  spite  of  this  tendency  the  organization  of  the  firm  was 
such  that  it  could  be  adapted  to  the  new  conditions.  Its  alliances 
were  strengthened  by  increasing  the  range  and  amount  of  its 
ownership  in  the  products  it  sold ;  and  its  own  business  became 
to  an  even  larger  extent  a  matter  of  selling  its  own  pig-iron 
rather  than  the  basic  materials  thereof.  To  be  sure,  this  de- 
velopment took  place  largely  after  M.  A.  Hanna  had  retired 
from  active  business;  but  his  successors  were  able  to  meet 
effectively  the  new  situation  as  it  developed,  partly  because  Mr. 
Hanna  had  established  the  business  on  sound  foundations  and 
made  it  both  a  tough  and  a  flexible  instrument. 

The  salient  fact,  consequently,  about  the  organization  de- 
veloped by  Mr.  Hanna  was  its  peculiar  personal  character. 
Although  transacting  a  volume  of  business  very  much  larger 
than  that  of  many  big  corporations,  and  although  it  has  formed 


64        MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

many  corporations  for  the  purpose  of  owning  particular  branches 
of  its  business,  it  has  remained  essentially  a  copartnership. 
A  corporate  organization  demands  impersonality  of  methods 
and  policy.  It  is  most  effective  when  its  operations  can  be- 
come automatic  and  be  reduced  to  rule.  But  the  business  of 
M.  A.  Hanna  &  Co.  was  the  creation  of  sound  and  enter- 
prising individual  management;  and  it  has  continued  to  de- 
mand management  of  this  kind.  Mark  Hanna  made  it  per- 
sonal ;  and  personal  it  has  remained.  It  was  successful  under 
his  management,  because  of  the  excellence  of  his  judgment, 
the  soundness  of  his  policy  and  the  absolute  personal  confi- 
dence which  he  inspired  among  his  associates.  It  has  continued 
to  be  prosperous  under  his  successors,  because  they  were  able 
to  bring  similar  qualities  to  its  direction.  Although  it  is  twenty- 
five  years  since  Mark  Hanna  was  actively  connected  with  the 
business  which  bears  his  name,  his  personality  still  lives  in  it 
and  determines  the  forms  of  its  activity. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

MISCELLANEOUS   BUSINESS   INTERESTS 

IN  the  account  given  of  the  business  which  Mr.  Hanna  and 
his  partners  gradually  built  up,  no  attention  has  been  paid  to 
other  contemporaneous  business  interests.  This  particular 
aspect  of  his  life  has  a  unity  of  its  own  and  can  best  be  treated 
independently  both  of  his  political  career  and  his  miscellane- 
ous business  engagements.  The  coal  and  iron  selling  agency 
constituted,  of  course,  the  foundation  of  his  business  structure. 
Until  1894  it  consumed  most  of  his  time  and  energy.  Through- 
out his  life  it  provided  him  with  his  sinews  of  war.  It  made 
him  a  wealthy  man,  and  he  needed  the  power  which  only  wealth 
can  give.  But  important  as  it  was  in  his  life,  and  clearly  as 
the  quality  of  the  man  was  expressed  in  the  contribution  he 
made  to  the  success  of  the  firm,  the  actual  sequence  of  events 
in  his  business  career  is  for  the  most  part  irrelevant  to  the  main 
current  of  his  life. 

From  1867  until  1880  he  appears  to  have  devoted  practically 
all  his  time  to  coal  and  iron.  The  first  six  of  these  years  were 
consumed  in  making  himself  a  master  of  the  business  and  in 
broadening  its  basis.  The  next  five  years  constituted  a  period 
of  general  trade  depression,  during  which  Mr.  Hanna  had  to 
struggle  in  order  to  maintain  the  ground  which  had  already 
been  won.  But  late  in  the  seventies  business  revived,  and 
Rhodes  &  Co.  began  to  reap  the  reward  which  a  period  of  active 
trade  brings  to  a  well-established  and  well-managed  business. 
Mr.  Hanna  found  himself  possessed  of  means,  which  enabled  him 
to  undertake  a  number  of  other  enterprises  of  some  importance. 
He  had  become,  indeed,  one  of  the  most  conspicuous  and  pros- 
perous of  Cleveland  business  men,  whose  cooperation  was  usually 
expected  in  matters  of  local  business  importance. 

The  first  of  these  miscellaneous  ventures  was  nothing  less 
than  a  plunge  into  the  newspaper  business ;  and  as  the  incident 
F  65 


66         MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

had  a  certain  bearing  on  Mr.  Hanna's  subsequent  political 
career,  it  must  be  told  in  some  detail.  His  interest  in  the  matter 
originated  in  an  attempt  made  by  certain  friends  and  asso- 
ciates to  give  renewed  life  to  an  old,  well-established,  but  de- 
cayed local  journal.  At  one  time  the  Cleveland  Herald  had  been 
the  most  influential  organ  of  the  Republican  party  in  northern 
Ohio,  and  the  only  prosperous  newspaper  in  the  city  of  Cleveland. 
But  owing  to  the  death  of  one  of  its  owners  and  the  bad  manage- 
ment of  the  remaining  partner,  both  its  circulation  and  its  pres- 
tige fell  away.  In  the  meantime  the  Cleveland  Leader,  which 
was  edited  and  for  the  most  part  owned  by  Edwin  Cowles,  was 
gradually  taking  its  place.  Later  the  Herald  was  bought  by 
Richard  C.  Parsons  and  William  Perry  Fogg.  Colonel  Parsons, 
a  former  Congressional  representative,  a  politician  of  consider- 
able influence,  and  a  cultured  and  able  man,  became  its  editor ; 
and  Mr.  Fogg,  a  dealer  in  crockery,  took  charge  of  the  busi- 
ness management.  They  put  both  additional  capital  and 
energy  into  the  Herald  and  made  it  a  good  newspaper,  but  all  to 
no  purpose.  They  could  not  either  shake  the  standing  of  the 
Leader  or  restore  the  Herald  to  its  former  position.  The  new 
owners  could  not  stand  the  strain.  Their  losses  threatened  to 
ruin  them,  and  they  had  to  sell  out. 

William  Perry  Fogg  retired,  and  Colonel  Parsons  persuaded 
a  number  of  prominent  men  in  Cleveland  to  come  to  his  as- 
sistance. The  new  owners  of  the  paper  were  a  syndicate  con- 
sisting of  J.  H.  Wade,  who  laid  the  foundation  of  the  Western 
Union  Telegraph  system ;  Henry  Chisholm,  the  founder  of  the 
Cleveland  Rolling  Mill  Company,  the  great  local  steel  works; 
John  D.  Rockefeller  and  H.  M.  Flagler ;  Amasa  Stone,  the  father- 
in-law  of  John  Hay;  S.  T.  Everett,  Dan  P.  Eels,  a  banker, 
Elias  Sims,  one  of  the  owners  of  the  West  Side  Street  Rail- 
way and  Mark  Hanna.  An  abler  and  more  successful  group  of 
business  men  would  have  been  hard  to  find  in  Cleveland  or 
elsewhere,  but  they  were  failures  as  the  publishers  of  a  news- 
paper. The  Leader  continued  to  prosper  and  the  Herald  to 
lose  money.  Finally  the  weary  millionnaires  refused  to  pay  any 
more  assessments.  Colonel  Parsons  retired  for  good,  and  the 
property  passed  into  the  control  of  Mr.  Hanna  and  a  few  as- 
sociates, with  the  former  as  president  of  the  company.  The  new 


MISCELLANEOUS   BUSINESS   INTERESTS  67 

management,  which  took  control  early  in  1880,  immediately 
made  an  ingenious  and  vigorous  attempt  to  rehabilitate  the 
property  and  at  the  same  time  to  crush  its  competitor.  Every 
editor  and  reporter  employed  by  the  Leader  who  was  supposed 
to  be  contributing  to  its  success,  was  taken  over  by  the  Herald 
on  the  theory  that  the  man  behind  the  gun  rather  than  the 
captain  of  the  ship  won  its  battles.  The  new  staff  are  said  to 
have  boasted  that  they  would  do  for  the  Herald  what  they 
thought  they  had  already  done  for  the  Leader.  In  the  mean- 
time, certain  former  employees  of  the  Herald  went  over  to  the 
Leader,  —  one  of  them  being  Mr.  James  B.  Morrow,  who  subse- 
quently became  the  editor  of  that  paper. 

Mr.  Edwin  Cowles,  editor  and  owner  of  the  Leader,  bit- 
terly resented  both  the  way  in  which  the  new  management  of 
the  Herald  began  its  attack  and  the  boasts  of  his  former 
staff.  He  was  a  journalist  after  the  manner  of  Horace  Greeley — 
a  blind  partisan,  a  bitter  and  abusive  controversialist,  but  a 
man  of  ability  and  weight.  He  regarded  the  desertion  of  his 
former  staff  as  base  treachery,  and  he  had  no  scruples  about 
allowing  his  personal  grievances  to  dominate  the  editorial 
policy  of  his  paper.  The  Herald,  and  Mark  Hanna  as  its 
financial  backer,  became  the  object  of  a  copious  stream  of  vi- 
tuperation and  ridicule. 

Throughout  the  next  five  years,  Mr.  Cowles  used  every 
available  opportunity  of  making  the  publishing  business  dis- 
agreeable for  Mr.  Hanna.  The  abuse  was  coarse  and  clumsy. 
The  editorial  staff  of  the  Herald  was  referred  to  as  "Mark 
Hanna  and  his  gang,"  and  his  management  of  the  paper  was 
described  as  "the  reign  of  Marcus  Aurelius."  Neither  did  Mr. 
Cowles  confine  himself  to  editorial  assaults.  Mr.  Hanna  was 
becoming  conspicuous  in  local  politics,  and  was  interested  in 
candidates  for  local  offices.  Wherever  such  an  interest  became 
manifest,  Mr.  Hanna's  candidate  could  always  count  on  the 
opposition  of  the  Leader;  and  when  Mr.  Hanna  tried  to  get 
himself  elected  delegate  to  the  Republican  Convention  of  1884, 
Mr.  Cowles  became  an  opposing  candidate  and  beat  him  at 
the  primaries.  To  a  man  like  Edwin  Cowles  every  fight  was 
a  personal  fight,  and  all  methods  were  fair  in  war. 

To  these  attacks  Mr.  Hanna  never  replied  in  kind,  and  he 


68         MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

was  probably  very  much  surprised  at  the  hornet's  nest  which 
he  had  stirred  up.  Of  course  the  Herald  announced  its 
contempt  for  the  Leader  with  the  politeness  characteristic 
of  American  journalism  of  that  period;  but  its  owner  avoided 
anything  like  a  personal  squabble.  The  Herald  was  a  side- 
issue  with  him.  He  never  gave  very  much  attention  or  time 
to  its  management,  and  even  the  brilliant  bit  of  strategy  with 
which  he  began  the  campaign  indicated  an  intention  of  dis- 
posing of  the  enemy  by  a  grand  coup  rather  than  by  hard  and 
patient  personal  work.  The  grand  coup  failed.  Mr.  Cowles 
was,  according  to  the  standard  of  the  day,  an  able  journalist ; 
and  he  was  an  angry  man,  fighting  with  his  back  to  the  wall  for 
all  that  he  had  in  the  world.  At  that  time  there  was  room  in 
Cleveland  for  only  one  prosperous  Republican  morning  news- 
paper. Not  unnaturally  the  survivor  proved  to  be  the  Leader. 

In  March,  1885,  Mark  Hanna  decided  to  quit.  His  news- 
paper enterprise  had  cost  him  a  good  deal  of  money,  and  he  had 
not  even  enjoyed  a  good  time  in  the  spending  of  it.  The  name 
of  the  Herald,  its  good-will  and  its  subscription  list  were 
sold  to  the  Leader  for  $80,000.  Its  plant  and  visible  property 
found  a  purchaser  in  the  Plain-Dealer.  The  Leader  celebrated 
its  victory  in  an  editorial  article,  which  described  its  defeated 
competitor  as  an  able  and  a  fair  antagonist  —  a  fact  which 
no  one  could  have  suspected  from  a  perusal  of  the  Leader's 
pages  a  few  weeks  earlier. 

Thereafter  the  Leader  ceased  its  personal  attacks  on  Mr. 
Hanna ;  but  in  the  opinion  of  men  who  watched  the  whole 
affair,  these  attacks  had  something  to  do  with  the  establish- 
ment of  a  false  impression  of  Mr.  Hanna's  personality  in  the 
minds  of  many  of  his  fellow-townsmen.  In  the  succeeding  years 
he  became  more  and  more  conspicuous  in  local  business  and 
politics,  and  the  kind  of  attack  which  a  Republican  newspaper 
had  begun  was  continued,  although  with  less  persistence,  by 
Democrats.  The  Plain-Dealer  referred  to  him,  sometimes  ob- 
scurely and  sometimes  overtly,  as  a  "Boss"  and  as  an  aggres- 
sive and  a  greedy  man.  The  Press,  an  afternoon  newspaper, 
which  was  seeking  to  attract  popular  attention  by  assaults 
on  conspicuous  citizens,  took  for  a  while  a  corresponding  line 
of  comment.  He  was  pictured  as  overbearing,  grasping  and  as 


MISCELLANEOUS   BUSINESS   INTERESTS  69 

indifferent  to  the  rights  of  others.  An  attempt  was  made  to 
prejudice  popular  opinion  against  him  by  representing  him  as 
hostile  to  the  business  prosperity  of  Cleveland.  The  lease, 
assumed  by  M.  A.  Hanna  &  Co.,  of  the  docks  of  the  Penn- 
sylvania Railroad  Company,  at  Ashtabula  was  cited  as  a  ne- 
farious attempt  to  divert  commerce  from  Cleveland  and  to 
snatch  the  bread  out  of  the  mouths  of  its  working-men.  Such 
misrepresentations  continued  for  many  years  and  contributed 
to  establish  locally  a  distorted  popular  impression  of  Mr.  Hanna 
long  before  he  became  a  national  political  leader. 

Mark  Hanna  was  as  far  as  possible  from  being  a  callous 
man.  His  expansive  and  sociable  disposition,  and  the  strong  ties 
which  bound  him  to  his  own  city  and  people,  made  him  ex- 
tremely susceptible  to  the  injustice  of  this  personal  misrep- 
resentation. But  he  had  too  much  good  sense  to  wince  in 
public  or  to  indulge  in  personal  recriminations.  He  was  a 
fighter  by  nature,  and  whenever  he  saw  a  good  chance  of  reply- 
ing to  a  specific  case  of  misrepresentation,  he  always  took  it, 
but  for  the  most  part  he  bore  it  with  silence,  if  not  with  in- 
difference. 

In  assuming  the  management  of  the  Herald,  Mark  Hanna 
had  no  ulterior  purpose.  He  did  not  attempt  to  make  his  un- 
profitable newspaper  pay  by  using  it  to  advance  his  other  busi- 
ness interests.  Mr.  J.  H.  A.  Bone,  who  was  managing-editor 
of  the  Herald,  when  it  was  sold  to  the  Leader,  stated  that 
Mr.  Hanna  never  meddled  with  the  editorial  department  and 
rarely  came  to  the  office.  Street  railway  questions  were  more 
or  less  discussed  in  the  City  Council,  and  Mark  Hanna  was  even 
then  the  practical  owner  of  a  street  railway,  but  he  never  asked 
the  Herald  to  take  one  side  or  the  other.  When  Mr.  Bone 
was  in  doubt  about  the  attitude  which  the  paper  should  assume 
in  reference  to  some  political  matter  of  importance,  he  some- 
times consulted  Mr.  Hanna ;  but  he  declares  emphatically  that 
his  employer  never  made  any  attempt  to  convert  the  Herald 
into  a  personal  organ  or  into  the  covert  promoter  of  his  own  pri- 
vate interests.  He  was  a  Republican,  and  the  Herald  was  a 
Republican  newspaper.  Beyond  that  he  had  no  personal  po- 
litical policy. 

Mr.  Hanna's  connection  with   the   Cleveland  Herald,   inci- 


70        MAECUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

dental  as  it  was  in  his  business  life,  constituted  in  a  sense  the  be- 
ginning of  his  public  career.  It  was  the  first  evidence,  that  is, 
of  his  assumption  of  a  certain  importance  in  the  public  affairs 
of  Cleveland.  His  personal  force  was  making  itself  felt  beyond 
the  limits  of  his  immediate  business  associations ;  and  the  very 
misrepresentations  which  were  coincident  with  the  beginning 
of  his  public  life  were  an  indirect  tribute  to  the  salience  of  his 
personality.  From  the  outset  he  took  a  strong  line  of  his  own 
and  by  his  methods  in  pushing  along  this  line  he  both  aroused 
enmities  and  conquered  friends.  Particularly  during  his  early 
career  he  did  not  attempt  to  conciliate  opposition.  He  made 
straight  for  his  goal,  and  if  any  one  stood  in  his  way,  the  obstacle 
was  usually  and  often  roughly  shoved  aside. 

The  characteristic  of  making  hard  and  straight  for  a  goal 
could  easily  be  confused  with  a  domineering  disposition.  Such 
a  confusion  took  place  in  Mr.  Hanna's  case  and  is  responsible 
for  the  accusations  of  being  a  "Boss"  which  were  levelled  at 
him  almost  from  the  start.  But  the  impulse  to  dominate  and 
to  succeed  is  very  different  from  the  impulse  to  domineer.  He 
always  wanted  power.  He  always  wanted  to  place  himself 
at  the  head  of  his  associates  in  the  prosecution  of  any  joint 
enterprise.  He  was  sometimes  intolerant  of  opposition,  im- 
patient with  meddlers  and  procrastinators,  brusque  in  manner 
and  explosive  in  speech.  Men  who  later  became  his  friends 
and  allies  were  repulsed  by  their  first  superficial  acquaintance 
with  him.  But  he  was  never  a  domineering  man.  His  leader- 
ship was  always  founded  on  personal  energy  and  efficiency, 
and  on  his  ability  to  make  other  people  believe  in  him ;  and  as 
men  knew  better  they  believed  in  him  and  trusted  him  the  more. 
His  work  and  his  methods  were  such  that  he  was  bound  to 
create  enmities;  but  his  enemies  could  not  accuse  him  of  in- 
justice any  more  than  his  friends  could  complain  of  lack  of  con- 
sideration. He  always  played  fair,  even  if  he  did  not  always 
play  politely ;  and  when  he  sat  in  a  game  he  usually  won,  and 
he  usually  occupied  or  came  to  occupy  a  seat  at  the  head  of  the 
table. 

In  1884  Mark  Hanna  started  another  outside  enterprise, 
which  was  destined  to  be  more  successful  than  his  excur- 
sion into  the  field  of  publishing.  He  organized  the  Union 


MISCELLANEOUS   BUSINESS   INTERESTS  71 

National  Bank,  of  which  he  became  president,  Sylvester  T. 
Everett,  vice-president,  and  Mr.  E.  H.  Bourne,  cashier.  He 
remained  its  president  until  his  death,  and  for  a  number  of 
years  he  gave  to  it  a  great  deal  of  personal  attention.  In  fact 
he  did  more  than  any  other  one  man  to  establish  it  and  build 
up  its  "clientele."  Mr.  Bourne,  who  succeeded  him  in  the 
presidency  of  the  institution,  testifies  to  the  energy  and  in- 
genuity he  showed  in  securing  valuable  accounts,  in  selecting 
proper  assistants  and  in  organizing  the  business. 

After  the  bank  had  been  thoroughly  established,  and  he  had 
gained  confidence  in  its  organization  and  officers,  he  ceased  to 
give  much  time  to  its  affairs.  Nevertheless  he  long  retained 
an  active  participation  in  its  management.  Mr.  Bourne  states 
that  he  continually  went  to  Mr.  Hanna  for  advice  and  that  he 
never  withdrew  disappointed  either  in  his  reception  or  in  the 
kind  of  counsel  he  received.  His  behavior  as  a  bank  president 
is  described  by  Mr.  Bourne  in  the  following  words:  "He  was 
earnest  and  decided  if  he  thought  he  was  right,  and  would 
persist  in  his  opinion.  But  if  upon  argument  he  was  convinced 
he  was  wrong,  he  was  always  willing  to  change  his  opinion. 
However,  you  always  had  to  convert  him  with  facts.  I 
never  saw  a  man  who  was  so  determined  to  carry  out  anything 
he  thought  was  right  and  who  was  so  willing  to  change  his  posi- 
tion when  he  found  he  was  wrong ;  and  he  was  just  as  firm  and 
cordial  after  he  changed  as  he  was  before.  His  judgment  was 
usually  reached  very  quickly,  for  he  was  an  economizer  of  time 
and  after  that  only  unimpeachable  facts  could  move  him.  He 
was  one  of  the  hardest  workers  I  ever  knew  and  was  in- 
variably clear,  frank,  honest  and  fearless  in  his  conduct  and 
conversation." 

In  an  article  on  Mark  Hanna  published  in  McClure's  Maga- 
zine in  November,  1900,  Mr.  William  Allen  White  inserted  the 
following  passage:  "In  the  early  eighties  —  apparently  by  way 
of  diversion  or  because  Satan  finds  some  evil  work  for  idle  hands 
to  do  —  when  the  coal,  iron  ore,  pig-iron,  steel,  shipping, 
railway,  and  theatrical  business  became  a  nerve-racking  mo- 
nopoly, Hanna  started  a  bank."  The  implication  of  this  pas- 
sage is  that  the  bank  was  started,  chiefly  because  Mark  Hanna 
had  more  energy  than  he  had  outlets  for  it ;  and  his  energy 


72        MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

happened  to  overflow  into  banking.  It  is  true  that  his 
energy  was  inexhaustible,  and  that  he  started  a  bank  and  made 
it  a  success  with  an  apparent  ease  that  almost  makes  the  job 
seem  to  be  a  diversion.  But  he  had  none  the  less  a  motive  in 
starting  the  bank, —  a  motive  which  was  not  merely  the  in- 
stinctive expression  of  superabundant  business  energy.  He 
wanted  to  help  a  friend  —  to  found  a  business  in  which  that 
friend  would  find  a  regular  and  a  remunerative  position. 

Among  Mark  Hanna's  papers  was  discovered  the  following 
note  scrawled  on  a  letter-heading  of  the  Union  National  Bank, 
dated  June  9,  1884  —  the  day  on  which  the  bank  started  to 
do  business.  The  scrawl  is  itself  undated,  but  must  have  been 
written  some  time  in  the  nineties. 

"Mark!  — 

"In  cleaning  out  my  desk  to-day  I  discovered  this  sheet 
and  send  (it  to)  you  as  a  souvenir  of  past  events.  On  the  9th 
of  June,  1884,  the  struggle  commenced. 

For  What? 

To  work  as  few  men  have  ever  worked  and  to  accomplish  what 
no  other  man  in  Cleveland  could  have  accomplished  in  the  time 
and 

For  What? 

To  supply  a  soft  snap  for  an  intriguing  conspiring  Yankee 
(codfish  bred)  who  has  yet  to  add  his  first  account  (save  his  own 
paltry  one)  to  the  business  of  the  bank.  The  rewards  of  merit 
in  this  world  are  past  finding,  Mark,  let's  hope  for  better  hi  the 
next ! 

(Signed)          "Ves." 

In  the  early  eighties  Mr.  Hanna  not  only  published  a  news- 
paper and  started  a  bank,  but  he  bought  a  theatre ;  and  he  came 
to  buy  it  in  a  very  characteristic  way.  He  was  walking  along 
Euclid  Avenue  one  day  with  some  friends  on  his  way  to  the 
Union  Club  for  lunch,  when  one  of  his  companions  remarked 
that  the  Opera  House  was  at  that  very  moment  being  put  up 
for  sale  by  the  sheriff.  This  theatre,  which  was  at  the  time  the 
largest  and  handsomest  in  Cleveland,  had  been  built  by  Mr. 
John  Ellsler,  who  was  a  citizen  of  Cleveland  and  an  actor  as 


MISCELLANEOUS   BUSINESS   INTERESTS  73 

well  as  a  manager.  The  enterprise  had  failed,  because  the 
theatre  was  rather  more  expensive  than  the  city  of  Cleveland 
was  capable  of  supporting,  and  Mr.  Ellsler  was  being  sold  up. 
Mr.  Hanna  and  his  friends  strolled  into  the  building  in  order 
to  watch  the  proceedings.  The  bidding  was  under  way.  Some- 
body had  made  an  offer  of  $40,000  for  the  property,  and  Mr. 
Hanna  to  his  own  surprise  and  that  of  his  friends  raised  the 
bid  a  few  hundred  dollars.  He  was  still  more  surprised,  when  a 
minute  later  he  found  himself  the  owner  of  the  theatre.  Ac- 
cording to  his  account  he  did  not  have  the  remotest  idea,  when 
he  entered  the  building,  of  buying  the  property. 

The  first  manager  placed  in  charge  of  the  theatre  was  his 
cousin,  L.  G.  Hanna,  a  son  of  Benjamin  Hanna.  For  some 
time  it  continued  to  be  unprofitable.  Its  owner  did  not  always 
approve  of  the  policy  of  his  manager.  One  evening  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Hanna  were  driving  by  the  building  and  saw  a  rough- 
looking  crowd  gathered  about  the  entrance.  Thinking  the 
building  was  on  fire,  Mr.  Hanna  left  his  wife  at  the  Union 
Club,  hastened  to  the  theatre  and  entered  the  box  always 
reserved  for  himself.  He  found  the  theatre  crowded  and 
a  wrestling  match  under  way.  The  first  round  had  just 
ended,  and  Mr.  L.  G.  Hanna  was  on  the  stage,  announcing  that 
inasmuch  as  the  performance  was  so  successful,  it  would  be 
repeated  on  the  following  week.  But  Mark  Hanna  did  not 
like  it.  He  had  bought  a  theatre,  not  an  arena.  One  account 
states  that  the  irate  owner  stood  up  in  his  box  and  declared  that 
no  such  performance  would  be  repeated  in  the  Opera  House, 
but  this  version  is  denied  by  Mr.  L.  G.  Hanna,  who  states  that 
Mr.  Hanna  merely  went  behind  the  scenes  and  asked  him  to 
omit  wrestling  matches  in  the  future  from  the  list  of  attractions. 

Augustus  F.  Hartz,  who  succeeded  Mr.  L.  G.  Hanna  as  lessee, 
had  already  been  the  manager  of  one  theatre  in  Cleveland, 
but  it  burned,  and  he  returned  to  his  earlier  occupation  of 
prestidigitator.  While  he  was  performing  in  Cincinnati  he 
received  a  telegram  from  Mr.  Hanna  asking  him  to  keep  an 
appointment  !in  Cleveland,  the  next  day.  Fifteen  minutes 
after  their  meeting  the  lease  was  signed.  Mark  Hanna  did 
business  without  unnecessary  delays.  Under  the  new  manage- 
ment the  theatre  became  more  successful;  and  Mr.  Hartz 


74          MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

continued  to  be  its  lessee  from  that  time  until  Mr.  Hanna's  death 
—  a  period  of  twenty  years. 

Mr.  Hartz  states  that  Mr.  Hanna  knew  all  about  the  theatre, 
every  part  of  it,  and  was  perfectly  competent  to  have  managed 
it  himself.  He  was  frequently  consulted  about  the  bookings, 
and  his  judgment  was  rarely  at  fault.  He  had  a  high  standard 
as  to  the  character  of  the  entertainments  presented,  and  wanted 
his  theatre  to  be  known  as  in  every  respect  first  class.  There 
was  reserved  for  his  use  a  box  which  he  usually  occupied 
some  time  during  the  week.  Mr.  Hartz  states  that  his  taste 
in  plays  and  players  was  good. 

He  insisted  that  the  Opera  House  should  be  well  and  thriftily 
managed,  but  he  was  kind  and  considerate  to  his  tenant.  At 
the  end  of  more  than  one  theatrical  season  Mr.  Hartz  went 
to  him  and  owned  up  that  he  could  not  pay  the  whole  rent. 
"All  right,"  Mr.  Hanna  would  say,  "I  can  wait."  "But," 
he  would  ask,  "have  you  paid  every  one  else?"  As  long  as  he 
knew  that  he  was  being  dealt  with  candidly,  he  was  willing  to 
help  and  to  wait;  but  he  always  insisted  upon  the  prompt 
settlement  of  every  other  obligation.  In  the  long  run  the  theatre 
proved  to  be  a  good  investment,  paying  him  a  return  of  $8000 
on  his  investment  of  $40,000. 

Yet  when  he  bought  the  theatre  he  obviously  had  not  done  so 
merely  as  an  investment.  He  preferred  to  keep  his  money  in 
his  business,  and  he  almost  never  bought  real  estate  except  for 
his  own  use.  Once  the  theatre  was  his,  he  was  too  good  a  man 
of  business  not  to  want  to  make  it  pay,  but  the  impulse  which 
prompted  his  successful  bid  did  not  flow  merely  from  a  quick  ap- 
prehension of  the  cheapness  of  the  property.  It  seems  to  have 
been  an  instinctive  by-product  of  a  lively  interest  in  the  drama 
and  in  theatrical  performers.  Plays  and  particularly  players, 
always  exercised  a  strong  fascination  upon  him.  He  liked  their 
animation,  their  gayety,  their  good-fellowship,  and  the  heighten- 
ing of  personality  which  the  practice  of  their  profession  bestows 
upon  them. 

Throughout  the  whole  of  his  life  Mr.  Hanna  was  intensely  and 
inveterately  social.  His  favorite  recreation  consisted  in 
companionship  with  other  people ;  and  even  during  his  years  of 
closest  business  preoccupation  he  rarely  sat  down  to  table 


MISCELLANEOUS   BUSINESS   INTERESTS  75 

without  a  certain  number  of  guests.  On  Sundays  and  holidays 
he  liked  to  have  the  house  full.  Moreover,  he  wanted  to  enter- 
tain, not  merely  his  friends  and  business  associates,  but  (as  his 
mother  did  before  him)  prominent  and  interesting  people  who 
visited  Cleveland;  and  among  the  visitors  to  Cleveland,  who 
were  necessarily  prominent  and  usually  interesting,  were,  of 
course,  the  constant  stream  of  performers  at  the  local  theatres. 
Mr.  Hanna  used  to  entertain  many  of  them  at  his  house,  and 
in  this  way  he  became  more  or  less  intimately  acquainted  with 
most  of  the  leading  American  actors  of  his  own  day. 

Among  the  actors  whom  he  knew  more  or  less  intimately  were 
Edwin  Booth,  Lawrence  Barrett,  John  McCullough,  Henry 
Irving,  W.  J.  Florence,  John  T.  Raymond,  W.  H.  Crane  and 
Joseph  Jefferson.  He  met  many  of  them  at  his  own  theatre. 
When  he  did  not  know  them,  he  would  go  to  their  dressing-room 
to  be  introduced,  and  then  take  them  to  his  home  as  his  guests. 
Some  of  them  he  helped.  His  most  intimate  friend  among  the 
players  was  Lawrence  Barrett,  with  whom  he  corresponded,  and 
whose  letters  to  Mr.  Hanna  are  almost  affectionate.  The 
business  man  had  helped  the  actor  with  a  loan  of  $10,000  at  a 
time  when  their  acquaintance  was  still  comparatively  slight, 
and  thereafter  their  association  ripened  into  a  warm  friendship. 
Mr.  Hanna  became  Mr.  Barrett's  business  adviser  and  helped 
him  both  to  make  and  keep  money.  Mr.  Hartz  states  that 
the  latter's  first  engagement  at  the  Opera  House  promised  to  be  a 
dreary  failure.  On  Monday  night  the  house  was  empty.  So  for 
Tuesday  night  Mr.  Hanna  bought  all  the  seats  in  the  theatre 
except  the  gallery,  and  distributed  them  among  the  "best" 
people  in  Cleveland.  It  cost  him  $1400,  but  thereafter  (accord- 
ing to  Mr.  Hartz)  Barrett's  reputation  was  established  in 
Cleveland  and  to  a  smaller  extent  in  neighboring  cities. 

Mr.  Hanna's  excursion  into  the  ownership  of  a  theatre  was, 
consequently,  the  result  of  human  rather  than  business  motives. 
He  did  not  do  it  to  make  money,  although  once  involved  he 
managed  to  make  the  investment  profitable.  But  his  theatre 
brought  him  into  closer  touch  with  a  group  of  people  whom  he 
found  interesting  and  diverting,  and  who  must  have  added  a 
grateful  alteration  to  the  somewhat  monotonous  social  life  of  a 
Middle  Western  city. 


76         MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

Mark  Banna's  other  and  final  miscellaneous  business  interest 
was  a  street  railway  company.  His  connection  therewith  began, 
when  in  1875,  after  the  death  of  his  father-in-law,  Mr.  Daniel  P. 
Rhodes,  he  took  the  latter's  place  as  director  of  the  Rocky  River 
Railroad.  This  little  steam  road  ran  for  five  or  six  miles  from  the 
city  westward  to  a  point  on  the  Lake,  which  was  a  favorite  place 
of  recreation  for  the  young  people  of  Cleveland.  Its  equip- 
ment consisted  of  three  locomotives  and  twelve  cars;  and  it 
successfully  lost  during  the  winter  all  the  money  it  made  during 
the  summer.  Its  right  of  way  was  sold  finally  to  the  Nickel 
Plate  Railroad ;  and  as  a  local  transit  agency  it  was  in  a  sense 
succeeded  by  the  West  Side  Street  Railway  Company.  That  com- 
pany had  been  incorporated  in  January,  1863,  for  the  purpose  of 
supplying  the  citizens  of  the  West  Side  with  a  horse-car  service, 
and  in  it  Mr.  Daniel  P.  Rhodes  was  largely  interested.  At  his 
death  this  interest  was  inherited  by  his  daughter  and  his  sons. 
Its  initial  capital  stock  of  $50,000  had  increased  by  1879  to  only 
$80,000,  which  indicates  that  during  these  sixteen  years  its 
growth  had  not  been  rapid.  Mrs.  Hanna's  interest  in  the  road 
after  her  father's  death  consisted  of  five  hundred  shares.  In 
1879  Mark  Hanna  was  elected  a  director,  having  qualified  by 
the  purchase  of  one  hundred  shares. 

Three  years  later,  in  1882,  he  purchased  five  hundred  more 
shares,  and  in  this  way  he  and  the  heirs  of  Mr.  Rhodes  obtained 
control  of  the  property.  Up  to  that  time  Elias  Sims  had  been 
president  of  the  corporation.  The  management  had  been 
anything  but  enterprising  or  efficient.  Its  service  was  cheap 
and  poor.  Its  passengers  had  the  pleasure  of  riding  in  old  cars 
which  were  no  longer  good  enough  to  be  used  in  New  York, 
and  these  cars  were  drawn  by  horses  which  had  been  discarded 
as  useless  for  any  but  a  semi-public  service.  Mark  Hanna  did 
not  like  such  management.  He  named  a  price  at  which  he 
would  sell  his  own  interest  or  purchase  the  interest  of  Mr. 
Sims.  That  the  price  was  liberal  is  indicated  by  the  fact  that 
in  twenty-four  hours  Mr.  Hanna  had  entered  into  control. 

The  West  Side  Street  Railway  Company  owned  about 
fifteen  miles  of  track,  almost  all  of  it  on  the  west  side  of  the 
Cuyahoga  River.  It  ran  cars  on  Detroit,  Pearl,  Lorain  and 
Bridge  streets,  and  thence  over  the  new  viaduct  to  the  Public 


MISCELLANEOUS   BUSINESS   INTERESTS  77 

Square.  Its  most  important  line  was  only  two  miles  and  a  half 
in  length.  In  order  to  become  a  profitable  road,  it  needed  to  im- 
prove its  service  and  extend  the  area  of  its  business  so  that 
it  could  be  more  economically  operated.  As  soon  as  he  assumed 
control  Mr.  Hanna  instructed  the  superintendent,  Mr.  Geo.  G. 
Mulhern,  to  buy  new  cars  and  horses,  and  to  put  the  road  in 
thoroughly  good  condition.  "You  do  the  work,"  he  said,  "and 
I'll  supply  the  money."  Little  by  little  the  lines  were  extended 
wherever  possible,  and  every  effort  was  made  to  keep  the  service 
abreast  of  the  growth  of  the  city. 

Somewhat  later  a  consolidation  was  effected  with  the  Wood- 
land Avenue  line  on  the  east  side  of  the  river,  and  then  with 
the  road  on  Kinsman  Street.  This  consolidation  largely  in- 
•creased  the  size  of  the  company  and  the  area  of  its  operations. 
Its  name  was  changed  to  the  Woodland  Avenue  and  West  Side 
Street  Railway  Company,  its  capital  became  $2,000,000,  and 
it  obtained  a  long  continuous  route  running  from  one  end 
of  the  city  to  the  other.  Mr.  Hanna  was  president  of  the 
new  company.  The  Woodland  Avenue  line,  when  he  assumed 
control,  was  also  run  down  and  was  in  need  of  complete  rehabili- 
tation. After  a  few  years  he  converted  it  from  a  losing  into  a 
paying  property. 

It  was  about  this  time  (that  is,  in  the  late  years  of  the 
eighties)  that  street  railroads  in  a  city  of  the  size  of  Cleveland 
began  to  be  really  profitable.  Their  traffic  increased  faster 
than  the  growth  of  population,  because  as  the  city  spread,  the 
amount  of  travelling  became  proportionately  larger.  Coincident 
with  the  necessary  increase  in  travelling  came  the  introduction 
of  the  electric  trolley,  which  at  once  enormously  improved  the 
service,  diminished  the  percentage  of  operating  cost  and  made 
the  consolidation  of  connecting  lines  necessary  in  the  interest 
both  of  the  best  service  and  the  lowest  operating  cost.  About 
1889  Mr.  Hanna  began  the  electrification  of  his  street  railways. 
A  little  later  a  further  consolidation  was  effected  with  the  Cleve- 
land City  Cable  Company,  which  owned  tracks  on  Payne  Avenue, 
Superior  and  St.  Clair  streets.  This  new  company  was  known  as 
the  Cleveland  City  Railway  Company,  its  capital  was  $8,000,000, 
afterwards  increased  to  $9,000,000,  and  the  whole  system  was,  of 
course,  operated  by  electric  trolleys.  Mr.  Hanna  continued  aa  > 


78         MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

president,  and  did  not  retire  until  his  company,  popularly 
known  as  the  "  Little  Consolidated,"  was  merged  with  the  Cleve- 
land Electric  Railway  Company — the  "Big  Consolidated." 

Mark  Hanna  never  owned  a  majority  of  the  stock  in  any  of 
the  companies  which  succeeded  to  the  old  West  Side  Street  Rail- 
way Company.  His  own  interest  and  that  of  his  immediate 
family  amounted  to  about  a  million  dollars  in  the  stock  of  the 
" Little  Consolidated."  Nevertheless  his  control  was  complete. 
He  did  not  interfere  much  in  the  details  of  operation,  but  he 
travelled  on  the  cars  a  good  deal  and  was  constantly  suggest- 
ing improvements  in  the  service.  On  the  whole,  however,  the 
operating  superintendent  was  held  responsible  for  the  running 
of  the  road,  while  Mr.  Hanna  financed  it,  decided  what  im- 
provements were  necessary,  and  when  and  how  they  should  be 
made.  The  directors  almost  always  followed  his  recommenda- 
tions; and  under  his  energetic  but  thrifty  management  the 
Cleveland  City  Railway  came  to  have  a  high  reputation  for 
the  efficiency  of  its  service. 

As  in  the  case  of  his  other  interests  Mr.  Hanna  did  not  buy  a 
street  railway,  because  he  had  carefully  calculated  the  probabil- 
ity of  large  future  profits  in  that  particular  business.  Indeed, 
in  1882  it  required  some  imagination  to  anticipate  that  such  a 
decrepit  enterprise  could  ever  be  made  remunerative.  The 
opportunity  for  large  profits  in  street  railways  resulted,  it  must 
be  remembered,  from  the  introduction  of  electrical  power.  He 
became  a  street  railroad  president  as  the  accidental  result  of 
his  wife's  inherited  interest  in  a  property  of  that  kind.  Mr. 
Hanna  saw  that  this  interest  would  continue  to  be  worth  little 
under  its  existing  management.  Being  a  man  accustomed  to 
take  decisive  action,  he  made  up  his  mind  that  the  interest  must 
either  be  sold  or  the  business  controlled.  When  the  old  manage- 
ment preferred  to  sell  out,  Mr.  Hanna  started  in  to  build  up 
the  property. 

He  had  another  interest  in  the  street  railway  besides  the 
family  interest.  He  lived  at  that  time  on  Franklin  Avenue  on 
the  West  Side.  One  of  the  tracks  of  the  company  passed  his 
door.  He  used  the  cars  to  take  him  to  and  from  his  office. 
His  pride  as  a  business  man  in  being  associated  only  with  well- 
managed  and  successful  enterprises  was  reenforced  by  local 


MISCELLANEOUS    BUSINESS   INTERESTS  79 

pride.  He  wanted  it  to  be  a  creditable  road  because  it  served 
himself,  his  own  neighbors  and  his  own  neighborhood.  It 
always  meant  more  to  him  than  did  an  ordinary  business 
interest.  It  became  in  fact  his  hobby.  He  used  to  call  it  his 
savings  bank. 

He  called  it  his  savings  bank  because  he  fully  understood  that 
it  performed  a  local  public  function,  as  does  a  savings  bank, 
and  because  he  put  into  it  for  many  years  a  portion  of  his  surplus 
income.  The  property  was  built  up  partly  with  his  own  money, 
and  it  could  not  have  been  made  profitable  except  by  means  of 
liberal  capital  expenditures.  The  railroad  and  its  equipment, 
which  he  bought  from  Elias  Sims,  was,  as  a  piece  of  physical 
property,  not  much  better  than  junk.  The  early  stockholders 
had  all  lost  money.  Mr.  Hanna  knew  that  he  had  to  make  a  good 
railroad  before  he  could  have  a  profitable  railroad,  and  when  he 
took  control  his  object  was  to  earn  a  profit  by  excellence  of 
service.  The  public  responsibility  which  he  recognized  as 
necessarily  attached  to  the  railroad  was  that  of  giving  its 
patrons  the  best '  possible  accommodations. 

That  the  railroad  really  did  become  profitable  was  due, 
not  merely  to  good  management,  but  to  the  growth  of  the  city 
and  to  the  substitution  of  electric  for  horse  power.  Mr.  Hanna 
entered  the  street  railway,  as  he  did  the  coal  and  iron  business, 
at  the  right  time.  The  conditions  which  were  to  make  it 
much  more  profitable  than  ever  before  were  just  coming  into 
existence.  The  growing  population  of  Cleveland  was  spreading 
out  and  was  obliged  to  do  an  increasing  amount  of  travelling  in 
the  course  of  a  day's  work.  Mechanical  improvements  offered 
an  opportunity  of  largely  reducing  the  cost  per  passenger.  A 
judicious  system  of  consolidation  and  transfers  could  be  used 
to  stimulate  traffic.  Mr.  Hanna  took  advantage  of  all  these 
opportunities  and  managed  in  the  end  to  make  the  railroad  pay 
interest,  not  merely  on  the  fresh  capital  he  had  obtained,  but 
upon  all  the  capital  originally  invested  in  the  enterprise.  Before 
the  new  conditions  had  come  into  existence,  the  most  capable 
management  could  scarcely  have  accomplished  such  a  result. 

Mr.  Hanna's  personal  attitude  both  towards  his  own  business 
ventures  and  later  towards  general  economic  questions  was 
that  of  the  industrial  pioneer  —  the  man  who  starts  enterprises, 


80         MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

takes  whatever  chance  they  involve  and  builds  them  up  with 
his  own  brains  and  hands.  A  street  railway  was  from  his 
point  of  view  much  like  any  other  business  enterprise.  The 
chief  difference  was  that  the  number  of  its  customers  gave  it  a 
semi-public  function;  but  its  duty  to  the  public  was  simply 
the  duty  of  all  economic  agents  —  that  of  rendering  efficient 
service.  If  it  rendered  efficient  service,  the  public  interest  no  less 
than  its  own  special  interest  demanded  (from  his  point  of  view) 
that  it  should  obtain  the  full  fruits  of  its  good  management. 
The  public  had  no  more  claim  on  a  share  of  the  profits  of  a  street 
railway  than  it  had  on  a  share  in  the  profits  of  the  Union  Na- 
tional Bank;  and  if  it  attempted  to  extort  such  a  share,  the 
only  result  would  be  the  discouragement  of  private  enterprise, 
the  refusal  of  capital  to  invest  and  the  consequent  diminution  of 
improvement  and  deterioration  of  service. 

The  industrial  pioneer  needs  more  than  anything  else  a  free 
hand.  In  our  own  country  he  has  until  recently  usually  enjoyed 
a  free  hand.  Mr.  Hanna  enjoyed  it  everywhere  except  in  his 
street  railway  business ;  and  being  accustomed  to  it,  he  was  im- 
patient when  any  unnecessary  obstacles  were  placed  in  the  way 
of  his  plans  of  improvement.  His  company  ran  its  cars  on  many 
streets  under  grants  from  the  municipal  government.  Attached 
to  these  grants  were  certain  specific  conditions.  The  franchises 
ran  for  a  comparatively  short  period,  because  a  general  law 
in  Ohio  limited  their  term  to  twenty-five  years.  The  prosperity 
of  the  company  and  the  excellence  of  its  service  depended 
partly  on  its  ability  to  secure  other  franchises,  necessary  to 
the  normal  development  of  the  system,  and  partly  upon  a 
renewal  of  its  existing  franchises.  At  the  time  of  their  expira- 
tion, Mr.  Hanna  considered  his  company  fairly  entitled  to  such 
extensions  and  renewals,  because  they  were  necessary  to  a 
continuation  of  good  service  and  its  further  improvement.  He 
honestly  believed  that  the  interest  of  all  concerned  would  be 
best  satisfied  in  case  he  and  his  associates  were  encouraged  to 
keep  on  investing  their  capital  in  the  business  and  extending 
the  service  to  the  limit  by  means  of  the  renewal  of  old  franchises 
and  the  grant  of  new  ones  on  liberal  terms. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  there  were  always  difficulties.  The  mu- 
nicipal government  of  Cleveland,  during  the  years  when  the 


MISCELLANEOUS   BUSINESS   INTERESTS  81 

system  of  the  Cleveland  City  Railway  Company  was  being  im- 
proved, consolidated  and  extended,  was  as  corrupt  as  that  of  the 
average  American  municipality.  The  council,  to  whom  was 
intrusted  the  grant  of  franchises,  was  composed  of  petty  local 
politicians  whose  votes  usually  had  to  be  secured  by  some  kind 
of  influence.  There  was  no  effective  reform  sentiment  in  the 
community.  A  street  railway  company  that  applied  for  and 
needed  particular  franchises  had  to  purchase  this  influence  or 
else  go  out  of  business.  Practically  every  street  railway  in  the 
country  which  was  confronted  by  this  situation  (few  escaped 
it)  adopted  the  alternative  of  buying  either  the  needed  votes 
or  the  needed  influence. 

The  West  Side  Street  Railway  Company  and  its  successors  were 
no  exception  to  this  rule.  It  was  confronted  by  competitors  who 
had  no  scruples  about  employing  customary  methods,  and  if 
it  had  been  more  scrupulous  than  they,  its  competitors  would 
have  carried  off  all  the  prizes.  Mr.  Hanna  had,  as  I  have  said, 
a  way  of  making  straight  for  his  goal.  He  was  peculiarly 
intolerant  of  a  nagging,  unenlightened  opposition  or  anything 
resembling  a  "hold  up."  He  and  his  company  did  what  was 
necessary  to  obtain  the  additional  franchises  needed  for  the 
development  of  the  system.  The  railroad  contributed  to 
local  campaign  committees  and  the  election  expenses  of  par- 
ticular coun,cilmen ;  and  it  did  so  for  the  purpose  of  exercising 
an  effective  influence  over  the  action  of  the  council  in  street 
railway  matters. 

Mr.  Hanna  had  in  the  beginning  fought  against  the  increasing 
corruption  of  municipal  politics  in  Cleveland ;  but  he  had  soon 
yielded  and  adapted  himself  to  conditions.  He  was  not  a 
reformer  either  by  disposition  or  by  creed.  He  was  always 
interested  at  any  particular  time  in  accomplishing  some  definite 
practical  result,  and  in  order  to  do  so  he  took  men  and  methods 
as  he  found  them.  What  distinguished  him  from  other  Ameri- 
can business  men  and  politicians  who  used  similar  methods 
was  that  the  results  which  he  wished  to  accomplish  were  usually 
good  results. 

In  the  case  of  the  street  railway  he  was  very  anxious  to  give 
a  thoroughly  good  service,  and  hev  was  ready  to  perform  every 
public  duty  which  could  in  his  opinion  be  fairly  imposed  upon  the 


82         MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

company.  He  neither  expected  to  make  extortionate  profits, 
nor  had  he  undertaken  the  business  for  that  purpose.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  the  money  he  made  in  the  enterprise  was  small 
compared  to  the  time  and  energy  which  it  had  cost  him.  The 
stock  of  the  company  during  his  management  never  paid  over 
four  per  cent,  and  the  amount  of  water  it  contained,  compared 
to  other  street  railways,  was  exceedingly  small  —  amounting  to 
only  about  twenty-five  per  cent.  Before  the  consolidation 
with  the  cable  line  the  property  of  the  company  never  had  been 
bonded,  because  Mr.  Hanna  was  opposed  to  paying  dividends 
as  long  as  the  company  was  in  debt.  His  financial,  like  his 
business,  methods  were  thoroughly  sound  —  as  sound,  to  use 
his  own  analogy,  as  those  of  a  savings  bank. 

At  a  later  date,  and  before  Mr.  Hanna  died,  the  Cleveland 
surface  railroads  became  the  storm  centre  of  municipal  politics 
in  Cleveland.  They  were  hauled  before  the  court  of  public 
opinion  by  Tom  L.  Johnson,  and  rightly  or  wrongly  they  were 
condemned.  Whatever  faults  they  had  committed  they  most 
assuredly  expiated.  But  the  fact  that  the  verdict  went  against 
them  should  not  be  allowed  to  obscure  their  manifest  good 
behavior  compared  to  the  really  flagrant  cases  of  street  rail- 
way mismanagement  in  Chicago  and  New  York. 

Mark  Hanna  in  particular  was  never  an  ordinary  street  rail- 
way financier.  He  had  no  interest  in  any  street  railway  system 
outside  of  Cleveland,  and  the  local  system  in  which  he  was 
interested  was  a  minor  one,  whose  cars  passed  his  own  door, 
and  in  which  he  took  the  same  sort  of  pride  that  a  man  might 
take  in  his  own  stable,  carriages  and  horses.  He  had  bought 
a  collection  of  rusty  rails,  worm-eaten  cars  and  tired  horses,  and 
had  converted  them  by  virtue  of  hard  and  patient  work  into 
an  efficient  railroad.  His  mental  attitude  towards  his  rail- 
road was  always  determined  by  his  early  struggles  and  tribula- 
tions ;  and  the  memory  of  them  prevented  him  from  sufficiently 
understanding  the  difference  between  the  conditions  prevailing 
in  the  street  railway  business  of  Cleveland  in  1882  and  1902. 

Public  opinion,  however,  came  to  recognize  that  the  street 
railways  had  passed  out  of  the  pioneer  stage;  and  for  many 
years  the  local  politics  in  Cleveland  were  dominated  by  the 
clash  between  the  old  and  the  new  conception  of  the  proper  rela- 


MISCELLANEOUS   BUSINESS   INTERESTS  83 

tions  between  the  city  and  the  street  railway  companies.  This 
clash  began  during  Mr.  Hanna's  life.  It  was  always  a  source 
of  political  embarrassment  and  weakness  to  him,  because  it 
involved  him,  as  a  national  political  leader,  too  much  in  a  local 
political  issue,  and  one  on  which  public  opinion  was  running 
against  him.  But  embarrassing  as  it  was,  and  much  as  one 
would  like  to  see  certain  aspects  of  Mr.  Hanna's  street  railway 
connection  expunged  from  the  record,  he  remained  through- 
out the  whole  episode  true  to  his  own  standards  and  character- 
istic personal  tendencies.  He  had  put  himself  into  the  street 
railway  just  as  he  had  put  himself  into  Rhodes  &  Co.,  the 
Union  National  Bank  and  the  theatre ;  and  he  had  become  more 
of  a  man  because  of  the  personal  expenditure.  All  his  business 
enterprises  were  fundamentally  personal  investments,  and  re- 
turned to  him  something  more  and  better  than  the  wages  of 
management  and  the  current  rate  of  interest. 


CHAPTER  IX 

MARK  HANNA  AND  HIS  EMPLOYEES 

THE  relation  between  Mr.  Hanna  and  the  men  who  worked 
for  him  in  his  various  enterprises  demands  special  treatment, 
not  only  because  of  its  intrinsic  interest,  but  because  of  the 
importance  which  it  came  to  have  during  his  subsequent  politi- 
cal career.  In  no  phase  of  his  business  life  are  the  essential  traits 
of  the  man  more  clearly  revealed. 

Mark  Hanna's  business  career  began,  as  we  have  seen,  in 
jumpers  and  overalls.  When  he  told  the  students  of  the  Western 
Reserve  College  not  to  be  ashamed  of  overalls,  he  was  not  posing 
or  offering  an  insincere  piece  of  advice.  No  doubt  he  had 
graduated  quickly  from  overalls  himself,  and  he  never  was  an 
ordinary  day-laborer,  but  he  started  with  and  always  retained  a 
hearty  sympathy  with  the  wearers  of  overalls  and  a  real  under- 
standing of  them.  As  his  interests  multiplied  and  as  he  gave 
more  and  more  time  to  politics,  he  was  obliged  to  delegate  to  a 
large  extent  the  management  of  his  business ;  but  until  the  end 
Mr.  Hanna  was  more  likely  to  interfere  in  questions  relating 
to  the  treatment  of  the  employees  than  in  any  other  branch  of 
his  affairs. 

I  have  described  him  as  fundamentally  an  industrial  pioneer, 
and  in  no  aspect  of  his  business  life  is  the  description  more  correct 
and  more  instructive  in  its  implications  than  in  his  relations 
with  his  employees.  The  social  life  of  the  pioneers  was  essen- 
tially homogeneous.  It  was  based  upon  good-fellowship  and  a 
freedom  and  frankness  of  intercourse.  There  were  inequalities 
of  wealth  and  position,  but  they  did  not  interfere  with  ease  and 
completeness  of  communication  and  with  mutual  sympathy 
and  understanding.  Before  the  ninth  decade  of  the  nineteenth 
century  the  early  pioneer  society  of  Ohio  had  disappeared.  A 
vast  difference  had  developed  between  the  manner  of  life  of 
a  prosperous  business  man  like  Mr.  Hanna  and  that  of  his 

84 


MARK  HANNA   AND   HIS   EMPLOYEES  85 

coal  miners  and  freight  handlers.  But  while  the  earlier  homo- 
geneity of  life  had  vanished,  no  man  could  be  true  to  the  pioneer 
tradition  without  keeping  a  bond  of  communication  with  the 
ordinary  day-laborer.  The  fact  that  Mark  Hanna  did  do  so 
distinguishes  him  sharply  from  the  common  run  of  very  success- 
ful business  men  of  his  own  generation.  It  is  the  final  and 
best  illustration  of  the  fundamental  humanity  of  his  disposition, 
his  practice  -and  his  point  of  view. 

It  is  literally  and  not  merely  figuratively  true  that  he  kept  in 
touch  with  his  employees.  Everybody  in  his  employment  felt 
free  to  go  to  him  at  any  time.  No  matter  whether  the  man  was 
the  head  of  a  department  or  a  common  laborer  on  the  docks,  he 
had  access  to  his  employer.  "  I  never  knew, "  says  Mr.  Leonard 
C.  Hanna,  "my  brother  to  turn  any  man  away.  In  our  business 
we  dealt  almost  entirely  with  common,  unskilled  labor,  and  in 
all  the  interests  which  the  firm  owned  and  directed  I  suppose 
we  had  six  thousand  employees.  We  never  had  serious  labor 
troubles.  On  our  docks  we  occasionally  had  local  and  temporary 
disturbances  among  the  ordinary  employees;  and  whenever 
these  occurred  it  was  always  my  brother's  custom  to  go  right 
among  the  men.  He  would  not  ignore  the  superintendent, 
but  would  take  the  latter  with  him  to  the  dock  and  hear  what 
the  men  had  to  say.  Then  he  would  take  such  action  as  he 
thought  to  be  necessary."  The  following  despatch  from  Ash- 
tabula,  printed  in  the  Cleveland  Leader  of  April  28,  1876, 
may  serve  as  a  comment  on  the  foregoing  statement:  "This 
morning  Mr.  Hanna,  of  Rhodes  &  Co.,  met  the  striking  laborers 
on  the  docks  at  Ashtabula  Harbor,  and  after  consultation  the 
men  accepted  the  terms  offered  and  resumed  work." 

Mr.  Hanna's  accessibility  to  his  employees  was  not  merely 
physical.  When  they  reached  him  he  always  heard  patiently 
and  considered  fairly  what  they  had  to  say.  If  they  had  any 
real  grievances,  reparation  was  promptly  and  freely  made.  If 
they  were  making  demands  which  in  his  opinion  were  neither 
fair  nor  possible,  he  had  the  gift  of  telling  them  so  frankly, 
while  at  the  same  time  not  arousing  any  hard  feeling.  He 
could  talk  their  language,  and  he  could  establish  a  common 
ground  of  good  feeling  which  permitted  full  discussion  of  dif- 
ferences and  which  usually  resulted  in  their  adjustment. 


86         MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

The  case  of  the  street  railway  offers  the  best  illustration  of 
the  way  in  which  they  felt  towards  him.  The  railroad  was,  as 
I  have  said,  his  hobby,  and  his  constant  use  of  it  enabled  him 
to  know  the  men  better  than  he  could  the  workers  in  the  mines  or 
on  the  docks.  When  he  travelled  on  the  cars,  he  usually  boarded 
the  front  platform  and  joined  the  motormen.  They  were  always 
glad  to  see  him,  would  give  him  a  stool  on  which  to  sit,  and  would 
talk  freely  to  him.  During  the  eighties  he  knew  almost  every 
employee  by  name;  and  later,  when  he  was  less  in  Cleveland 
and  there  were  nine  hundred  men  on  the  pay-roll,  he  continued 
to  remember  a  large  part  of'  them.  From  the  day  on  which  he 
became  connected  with  the  road  there  never  was  a  strike,  and 
never  did  the  crew  of  a  car  refuse  to  take  it  out.  The  superin- 
tendent of  the  road,  George  G.  Mulhern,  states  that  at  least  one- 
third  of  the  men  who  worked  on  the  old  Rocky  River  dummy 
road  and  who  came  to  the  West  Side  Street  Railroad  remained 
in  Mr.  Hanna's  employment  until  he  resigned  as  president  at 
the  final  consolidation  of  the  Cleveland  City  and  Cleveland 
Electric  companies  —  a  period  of  over  twenty-five  years. 

He  was  always  ready  to  receive  the  men  in  his  office  and  talk 
to  them.  The  delegation  or  committee  which  went  to  him 
about  grievances  usually  departed  either  convinced  or  satisfied. 
Captain  O.  D.  Brainard,  a  car-despatcher  on  the  road,  states 
that  Mr.  Hanna  would  allow  his  street  railroad  employees  to 
see  him  when  he  would  allow  no  one  else.  "I  have  gone," 
says  Mr.  Brainard,  "with  committees  to  his  office  when  there 
would  be  scores  of  people  waiting  in  the  reception  room  to  see 
him.  He  would  have  us  brought  in  by  a  side  door  ahead  of  all 
the  rest.  One  day  when  a  committee  wanted  to  see  him,  he 
was  about  to  take  a  train  and  had  only  fifteen  minutes  to  spare. 
But  he  saw  them  and  made  his  other  callers  wait  until  another 
time.  It  made  no  difference  whether  he  was  in  his  office,  his 
house,  what  he  was  doing  or  whom  he  had  as  guests,  he  would 
always  honor  the  card  of  an  employee.  He  usually  knew  us,  for 
if  he  once  heard  a  man's  name,  he  rarely  forgot  it." 

Peter  Cox,  who  was  a  conductor  on  the  Detroit  Street  line  for 
seventeen  years,  gives  an  interesting  account  of  his  relations 
with  Mr.  Hanna.  Although  working  on  the  route  used  by 
Mr.  Hanna  himself,  he  never  spoke  to  his  employer  until  after 


MAKK   HANNA   AND    HIS   EMPLOYEES  87 

an  accident  which  had  befallen  Mr.  Hanna  during  a  trip  on  the 
Great  Lakes.  He  had  been  going  around  on  crutches,  but  on 
this  day  he  walked  with  a  cane.  "When  he  boarded  my  car  I 
said  to  him  that  I  was  glad  to  see  him  without  crutches.  He 
then  told  me  the  story  of  his  accident,  being  as  friendly  and 
going  into  as  many  details  as  he  would  in  case  I  were  a  close 
business  associate.  He  said  he  had  been  to  Duluth  or  some 
other  northern  port,  that  he  had  left  the  vessel  at  the  dock,  and 
and  while  returning  to  it  he  had  fallen  from  a  long  ladder.  I  had 
the  whole  story.  I  never  saw  a  man  like  him  and  I  have  worked 
for  many.  He  always  talked  freely  and  confidentially  to  his  men, 
no  matter  who  they  were." 

The  same  conductor  gives  an  account  of  an  interview  between 
Mr.  Hanna  and  an  employee  with  a  grievance.  "The  barnmen 
wanted  an  increase  of  wages.  They  had  gone  to  the  company's 
offices  and  had  sent  in  petitions  for  a  raise  of  pay,  but  they  had 
not  received  an  answer.  Times  were  good  and  the  trackmen  were 
all  getting  raises,  but  the  barnmen  were  not.  In  those  days  each 
barnman  had  fourteen  horses  to  take  care  of;  they  had  to  be 
cleaned  and  watered  —  other  men  did  the  feeding  —  and  the 
harness  had  to  be  thrown  on  and  off.  One  of  the  barnmen 
waited  at  Detroit  Street  and  Lake  Avenue,  where  Mr.  Hanna  took 
the  car,  and  when  he  came  up  the  man  said,  'Mr.  Hanna,  I 
have  appointed  myself  a  committee  of  one  to  wait  upon  you  and 
see  about  a  raise  of  wages/ 

"Mr.  Hanna  looked  at  him  a  minute  and  replied,  'I  am 
hardly  the  one  for  that ;  you  ought  to  see  Mulhern.'  [George 
G.  Mulhern,  superintendent.] 

"'Well,'  the  man  went  on  to  say,  'we  have  sent  petitions 
and  got  no  answer.  So  I  thought  I  would  go  to  the  fountainhead 
myself.'  Then  the  man  told  how  the  trackmen  had  had  their 
wages  increased.  'But  your  job,'  Mr.  Hanna  answered,  'is 
good  for  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  days  a  year  if  you  want  to 
work.  The  job  of  the  trackmen  is  only  good  in  summer,  and 
in  rainy  weather  they  can't  work.' 

"  'Yes,'  the  barnman  replied,  'but  our  work  can't  be  done  by 
your  high-priced  trackmen.  Put  them  in  our  places  and  they 
would  fail.' 

"  Mark  Hanna  stood  there  and  argued  with  that  man  as  he 


88         MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

would  have  argued  with  President  McKinley.  After  a  while  he 
said,  'I  will  talk  with  George  and  James  and  you  will  hear 
from  me/  [George  G.  Mulhern  and  James  B.  Hanna,  son  of 
Kersey  Hanna  and  cousin  of  M.  A.  Hanna,  who  was  general 
manager  of  the  road.]  Afterwards  Mr.  Hanna  asked  the 
general  manager,  referring  to  the  man  who  had  talked  with  him, 
'Who  is  that  old  fellow?'  And  he  was  told  it  was  Frank 
Hunter,  one  of  the  best  barnmen  they  had.  Mr.  Hanna 
said,  'He  is  a  damned  smart  old  fellow/  And  the  first  thing 
the  men  knew  they  got  their  raise." 

The  management  of  all  of  Mr.  Hanna' s  enterprises  was  liberal 
to  injured  employees.  When  one  of  the  stage  hands  of  the 
theatre  fell  ill,  he  was  paid  eighteen  dollars  a  week  for  a  year 
and  a  half.  A  workman  who  had  been  injured  on  a  dock  of 
M.  A.  Hanna  &  Co.  was  put  on  the  Opera  House  pay-roll  until 
he  recovered  —  which  was  a  mixture  of  kindness  and  prudence. 
The  man  was  taken  care  of  in  this  way  so  that  his  fellow-work- 
men should  not  know  of  it.  On  the  street  railway  the  men  who 
met  with  accidents  or  fell  ill  drew  half  pay  as  long  as  they  were 
laid  off.  The  company  had  its  own  physician  and  surgeon, 
whose  services  were  at  the  disposal  of  any  employee,  free  of 
charge.  Mr.  Hanna  personally  loaned  money  to  the  men,  with 
which  to  buy  homes ;  and  they  were  allowed  almost  to  name 
the  terms  on  which  they  paid  him  back.  The  motormen  and 
conductors  always  had  a  lay-over  of  ten  minutes  at  each  end  of 
the  line  —  with  a  lounging  room  to  spend  it  in,  a  billiard  table 
and  reading  matter.  No  employee  was  allowed  to  drink  while  on 
duty ;  but  whenever  a  man  was  dismissed  for  disobedience  of  this 
or  any  other  rule,  he  was  given  a  second  chance.  Mr.  Hanna 
would  frequently  reinstate  a  man  over  the  head  of  the  superin- 
tendent. 

The  street  railway  employees  repaid  the  kind  and  fair  treat- 
ment they  received  by  an  unusual  feeling  of  loyalty ;  and  on  one 
occasion  this  loyalty  received  an  effective  expression.  In  the 
spring  of  1899  Mr.  Hanna  had  planned  to  go  to  Europe, 
chiefly  for  his  health;  but  at  the  last  moment  he  hesitated, 
because  of  probable  labor  troubles  in  Cleveland.  His  own 
employees  were  content ;  but  a  strike  was  threatened  on  the  lines 
of  his  larger  competitor — the  "Big  Consolidated."  He  did  not 


MARK  HANNA   AND   HIS   EMPLOYEES  89 

dare  to  leave  without  some  assurance  that  his  own  men  would 
not  be  drawn  by  sympathy  into  the  strike,  and  he  asked  the 
superintendent  to  send  a  delegation  of  thirty  men  to  him,  so 
that  he  could  reach  an  understanding  with  them.  "Boys," 
said  Mr.  Hanna,  when  they  arrived, "  I  have  been  preparing  to  go 
to  Europe  for  a  little  rest.  But  it  looks  as  if  there  would  be 
trouble  on  the  other  road,  and  before  I  go,  I  want  to  know 
whether  you  will  be  drawn  into  it.  If  there  is  any  chance  of 
trouble  on  our  road,  I  won't  go.  But  if  you  are  satisfied  and 
agree  to  keep  at  work,  I  will  go."  There  was  not  a  man  in 
the  delegation  who  did  not  personally  assure  him  that  he  was 
to  go  to  Europe  and  that  they  would  look  after  the  railroad. 

The  men  were  as  good  as  their  word.  The  strike  occurred  on 
the  "Big  Consolidated,"  and  it  proved  to  be  the  worst  of  its 
kind  in  the  history  of  Cleveland.  For  days  together  there 
were  scenes  of  wild  disorder.  No  cars  could  be  run  unless 
guarded  by  the  police.  The  strikers  did  their  best  to  establish 
a  reign  of  terror,  even  going  so  far  as  to  post  observers,  who  were 
to  take  down  the  names  of  business  men  and  politicians  boarding 
the  cars.  Feeling  ran  extremely  high,  and  the  most  strenuous 
attempts  were  made  to  induce  the  employees  of  the  "  Little 
Consolidated  "  to  strike  in  sympathy.  They  were  surrounded  by 
men  of  their  own  class,  and  were  told  that  victory  would  be  easy 
if  they  would  only  leave  their  cars  and  absolutely  tie  up  traffic 
in  Cleveland.  Every  possible  pressure  was  brought  to  bear 
upon  them,  but  they  did  not  waver.  They  continued  to 
operate  the  road,  and  so  kept  their  word  to  the  man  who  always 
kept  his  word  with  them.  After  Mr.  Hanna  returned  from 
Europe,  a  five-dollar  gold  piece  was  placed  in  the  pay  envelope 
of  every  employee  as  a  small  evidence  of  appreciation. 

During  the  course  of  his  business  career  Mr.  Hanna  was  in- 
volved in  only  one  serious  strike.  It  occurred  in  the  Massillon 
coal  district  in  the  spring  of  1876 ;  and  it  resulted  in  violence, 
bloodshed,  the  calling  out  of  the  militia,  the  shooting  of  at 
least  one  striker  and  the  criminal  prosecution  of  others.  It 
made  a  deep  impression  on  Mr.  Hanna.  Late  in  life  when  he 
became  interested  in  a  very  promising  attempt  to  diminish  the 
number  of  labor  disputes,  and  when  he  was  delivering  speeches 
all  over  the  country,  urging  upon  employers  and  employees  a 


90          MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS    LIFE   AND   WORK 

program  of  conference  and  conciliation,  he  referred  constantly  to 
this  early  experience.  It  had  convinced  him,  he  said,  that  some 
better  method  must  be  found  to  adjust  the  differences  between 
capital  and  labor;  and  his  own  subsequent  accessibility  to  his 
employees  may  have  been  partly  due  to  his  consequent  deter- 
mination to  avoid,  so  far  as  possible,  any  serious  misunderstand- 
ings and  differences. 

The  first  conspicuous  period  of  American  industrial  expansion 
occurred  during  the  few  years  previous  to  1873.  It  involved 
among  other  things  an  enormous  and  sudden  growth  in  the 
production  of  coal  —  a  growth  so  sudden  and  enormous  that 
very  unwholesome  conditions  came  to  prevail  in  the  industry. 
Many  mines  were  opened  by  individuals  or  companies  with 
insufficient  capital,  the  most  dangerous  and  wasteful  methods 
of  mining  were  used,  and  for  a  while  extremely  high  prices  were 
paid  to  labor.  After  the  panic  of  1873  a  process  of  purging  took 
place,  which  brought  severe  losses  or  suffering  to  every  one  in- 
terested in  the  production,  particularly  of  bituminous  coal. 
The  demand  for  it  was  cut  suddenly  by  fifty  per  cent.  The 
operators  were  poorly  organized.  Cut-throat  competition  took 
place.  Conservatively  managed  companies  found  the  ground 
cut  from  under  their  feet  by  weak  competitors,  who  must  get 
the  business  or  fail.  The  whole  industry  was  disorganized. 

The  panic  of  1873  and  the  prolonged  business  depression 
fell  with  terrible  effect  on  the  wage-earner  —  particularly  in 
overexpanded  industries  like  that  of  soft  coal.  The  operators 
were  obliged  to  reduce  wages  —  in  case  they  were  to  continue 
to  produce;  and  the  reductions  were  severe  because  the  ex- 
cessive rate  of  expansion  previous  to  1873  had  made  the  wage- 
scale  a  burden  on  the  industry.  One  cut  succeeded  another,  and 
the  miners  could  make  no  effective  resistance.  They  were  or- 
ganized after  a  fashion,  but  the  union  was  young  and  weak,  and 
in  any  event  could  not  have  withstood  the  avalanche.  The 
more  disorganized  a  business  is,  the  more  certainly  it  follows  that 
the  expenses  of  any  period  of  acute  depression  will  fall  largely 
upon  the  wage-earner.  No  employers'  organization  would  need 
or  dare  to  be  as  remorseless  and  inhuman  in  its  bargains  with 
labor  as  are  a  number  of  competitive  producers,  each  one  of 
whom  is  fighting  for  his  life. 


MARK   HANNA   AND    HIS    EMPLOYEES  91 

In  the  year  1873  a  national  association  of  coal  miners  had 
been  organized  as  the  result  of  a  convention  held  at  Youngstown, 
Ohio.  Its  officers  were  conservative  men,  and  the  policy  of 
the  association  looked  towards  the  strike  only  as  a  last  resort. 
Its  announced  object  was  to  secure  conferences  with  the  oper- 
ators and  arbitrate  differences.  When  the  crash  came,  the 
price  of  coal  began  to  tumble  and  wages  were  cut.  John 
Siney,  the  president  of  the  association,  knowing  that  the  dis- 
organized operators  were  helpless,  counselled  against  strikes 
and  advised  the  local  organizations  to  make  the  best  terms  they 
could.  In  the  meantime  efforts  were  continued  to  increase  the 
membership  of  the  association,  whose  enrollment  towards  the 
end  of  1874  amounted  to  20,000  names. 

The  officers  of  the  association  soon  felt  strong  enough  to  make 
overtures  to  the  operators  for  the  establishment  of  friendly  re- 
lations, but  they  met  with  little  success.  The  "  History  of  the 
Coal  Miners  of  the  United  States,"  by  Andrew  Roy,  states  that 
Rhodes  &  Co.  was  the  only  exception  to  a  series  of  peremptory 
refusals  to  recognize  the  union  which  they  received  from  the 
producers  in  Cleveland.  Messrs.  Siney  and  James  (the  presi- 
dent and  secretary)  saw  Mr.  Hanna  himself,  and  received  his 
assurance  that  if  they  were  true  to  their  policy,  as  described  to 
him,  that  he  would  support  them  and  do  his  best  to  get  the 
other  operators  to  arbitrate  future  differences. 

About  this  time  (that  is,  in  the  fall  of  1874)  the  miners  of 
Tuscarawas  Valley  were  notified  that  the  price  of  mining  would 
be  reduced  from  90  to  70  cents  a  ton  and  other  labor  in  propor- 
tion. The  miners  in  this  district  had  been  enjoying  exception- 
ally good  wages  and  were  unusually  well  organized.  They  de- 
termined to  strike  rather  than  accept  the  reduction.  Both 
sides  finally  agreed,  partly  under  the  influence  of  President 
Siney  of  the  national  association,  to  submit  the  difference  to 
arbitration.  Judge  Andrews  of  Cleveland  was  appointed  um- 
pire. The  board  met  in  the  office  of  Rhodes  &  Co.,  and  Mark 
Hanna  was  one  of  the  representatives  of  the  operators.  The 
decision  went  almost  wholly  against  the  miners,  the  price  being 
fixed  at  71  cents  a  ton.  The  latter  accepted  the  award  reluc- 
tantly and  sullenly.  They  continued  to  work,  but  they  felt 
that  a  strike  would  have  forced  from  their  employers  better 


92         MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

terms.  It  may  be  added  that  the  award  reduced  the  price  of 
mining  in  the  Tuscarawas  field  to  the  level  which  had  already 
come  to  obtain  in  competing  fields.  The  miners  of  that  district 
protested  chiefly  because  they  had  been  accustomed  to  wages 
higher  than  those  paid  elsewhere. 

Shortly  after,  one  of  the  coal  companies  in  the  district,  which 
was  not  a  member  of  the  operators'  association,  made  an  in- 
dividual advance  of  nine  cents  a  ton,  in  order  to  induce  its  em- 
ployees not  to  protest  against  the  company's  rejection  of  the 
usual  practice  of  having  a  check-weighman  at  the  scales.  The 
discontent  of  the  employees  of  the  other  mines  was  much  in- 
creased by  this  advance,  and  they  appealed  to  the  general 
officers  of  the  national  association  to  be  absolved  from  the 
decision  of  the  umpire.  After  hearing  their  arguments  the 
board  decided  to  release  them  from  the  award.  Immediately 
thereafter  a  formal  demand  was  made  upon  the  operators  for 
eighty  cents  a  ton ;  and  early  in  April,  1875,  a  conference  was 
held  in  Akron  to  discuss  this  demand.  Mr.  James  Ford  Rhodes, 
Mark  Raima's  brother-in-law,  presided  at  this  meeting. 

Mr.  Hanna  himself,  as  the  head  of  the  operators'  association, 
argued  the  case  for  the  employers,  and  his  argument  is  worth 
quoting  in  part,  because  of  the  light  it  throws  upon  his  opinions 
even  at  this  early  date.  He  admitted  that  the  action  of  the 
Crawford  Coal  Company,  in  raising  wages,  had  given  the  miners  a 
grievance ;  but  he  argued  that  they  would  do  better  to  stand  by  the 
award.  The  operators,  other  than  the  Crawford  Coal  Company, 
had  refused  to  permit  the  abolition  of  the  check-weighman, 
because  the  miners  had  a  right  to  that  protection ;  and  they 
should  not  be  penalized  for  standing  by  their  employees  in  this 
matter  by  being  asked  or  forced  to  raise  wages.  In  addition 
he  made  a  general  argument  in  favor  of  the  arbitration  of  in- 
dustrial disputes,  and  of  what  would  now  be  called  collective 
bargaining  between  associations  of  employers  and  employees. 

The  men  insisted  on  an  advance,  and  when  they  began  to 
strike  the  operators  yielded.  But  not  for  long.  On  August  1 
the  operators  succeeded  in  reducing  the  price  from  eighty  to 
seventy-five  cents — which  prevailed  in  the  valley  until  March, 
1876.  Then  a  further  reduction  to  sixty-five  cents  was  proposed. 
The  officers  of  the  union  advised  the  miners  to  compromise 


MARK  HANNA   AND   HIS  EMPLOYEES  93 

on  seventy  cents,  but  they  were  ignored  and  a  strike  declared. 
The  operators  attempted  to  break  the  strike.  They  collected 
some  miners  in  and  around  Cleveland,  and  with  them  manned 
a  mine,  situated  a  few  miles  south  of  Massillon.  This  mine  is 
described  as  the  Warmington,  and  belonged  either  to  George  H. 
Warmington,  a  partner  of  Mr.  Hanna,  or  else  to  Rhodes  &  Co. 
In  either  event  it  would  have  been  operated  by  the  firm.  About 
the  middle  of  April  the  operators  proposed  to  place  more  men 
at  work  on  the  mine,  and  on  April  14  a  second  batch  of  strike- 
breakers was  sent  out  under  the  direction  of  Mr.  Warmington 
himself.  Several  hundred  of  the  strikers  were  holding  a  meet- 
ing near  the  mine  when  the  strangers  arrived,  and  an  orderly 
meeting  was  converted  by  the  sight  of  the  "scabs"  into  a  howl- 
ing mob.  They  made  a  rush  for  the  car.  Accounts  vary  as  to 
precisely  what  occurred  thereafter.  According  to  the  "  History 
of  the  Coal  Miners,"  from  which  I  have  already  quoted,  Mr. 
Warmington  ordered  the  strikers  to  halt,  and  threatened  them 
with  a  pistol.  A  contemporary  account  in  the  Cleveland 
Leader  makes  no  mention  of  such  a  weapon.  At  any  rate, 
the  miners  rushed  forward,  knocked  Mr.  Warmington  down, 
and  would  have  beaten  him  to  death,  had  not  two  of  their  own 
number,  Bennett  Brown  and  William  Ellwood,  saved  his  life 
at  the  risk  of  their  own. 

Disorder  prevailed  throughout  the  district.  The  sheriff  was 
helpless  and  petitioned  the  Governor,  Rutherford  B.  Hayes,  for 
troops.  After  some  hesitation  a  company  of  the  militia  was 
sent  to  Massillon  and  placed  in  the  Warmington  mine.  The 
night  following  their  appearance  the  strikers  captured  the  other 
mines  thereabouts  operated  by  Rhodes  &  Co.,  and  set  them 
on  fire.  The  soldiers,  however,  soon  suppressed  the  violence. 
Many  arrests  were  made",  and  one  miner  was  shot  while  at- 
tempting to  escape.  The  disorder  caused  the  operators  to 
cooperate  more  vigorously,  and  in  the  end  the  strikers  had  to 
return  to  work  with  their  pay  diminished  to  sixty-five  cents  a 
ton.  Within  a  couple  of  years  their  wages  had  been  cut  by  two- 
sevenths. 

Feeling  ran  high  against  the  disorderly  miners,  and  it  was 
not  easy  to  find  an  attorney  to  defend  them.  Finally  their  de- 
fence was  undertaken  by  William  McKinley,  Jr.,  the  case  being 


94         MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS    LIFE    AND    WORK 

tried  at  Canton,  the  county  seat.  His  pleading  was  so  successful 
that  out  of  twenty-three  indicted  men  only  one  was  convicted, 
and  he  was  sent  to  the  penitentiary  for  three  years.  The  trial 
took  place  just  before  the  convention  which  gave  to  McKinley 
his  first  nomination  for  Congress. 

Inasmuch  as  Mark  Hanna,  as  the  head  of  the  operators' 
association,  was  in  Canton  during  the  trial,  his  first  meeting 
with  McKinley  may  have  taken  place  on  this  occasion;  but 
if  such  is  the  case  the  meeting  made  no  impression  on  either 
of  the  two  men.  Mr.  Hanna,  in  an  article  on  "  McKinley  as  I 
Knew  Him,"  published  after  the  President's  death,  explicitly 
states  that  he  has  no  recollection  of  his  first  meeting  with  his 
friend.  He  believes  it  took  place  "early  in  the  seventies"  — 
as  well  it  might,  for  his  business  interests  must  have  frequently 
taken  him  to  the  region  in  which  McKinley  was  a  rising  and 
popular  young  lawyer  and  politician.  Judge  George  E.  Bald- 
win, who  was  associated  with  McKinley  as  counsel  of  the  ac- 
cused miners,  states  that  he  is  "sure"  that  the  meeting  at  Can- 
ton during  the  trial  was  not  the  first  meeting.  He  knew  both 
men  well  throughout  many  years,  and  neither  of  them  ever  spoke 
to  him  about  the  matter  —  as  they  would  be  likely  to  do,  be- 
cause of  his  intimate  connection  with  the  case  as  leading  coun- 
sel. In  any  event,  even  if  the  first  meeting  did  occur  at  Canton 
in  June,  1876,  during  the  trial,  it  was  merely  a  casual  contact, 
which  resulted  in  no  closer  association  for  many  years. 

Such  is  the  story  of  the  one  serious  disagreement  with  their 
employees  in  which  any  of  Mr.  Hanna's  companies  were  en- 
tangled. If  the  miners  were  hardly  treated  on  this  occasion, 
that  was  the  result  of  general  conditions,  which  no  individual 
was  powerful  enough  to  check.  Mr.  Hanna  himself,  at  a  time 
when  labor-unions  were  regarded  with  even  greater  disfavor 
by  employers  than  they  are  at  present,  was  friendly  to  the 
unions.  John  James,  the  secretary  of  the  Miners'  National 
Association  in  1875  and  1876,  states  that  "he  was  the  first  min- 
ing operator  in  the  bituminous  fields  of  the  United  States  to 
recognize  the  cardinal  principle  of  arbitration  in  the  settlement 
of  wages,  disputes,  and  the  first  also  to  recognize  the  '  Miners' 
National  Association.' "  During  the  whole  of  their  intercourse 
Mr.  James  found  him  to  be  "one  of  the  most  intelligent,  con- 


MARK   HANNA   AND    HIS   EMPLOYEES  95 

siderate  and  conservative"  of  the  operators.  He  was  always 
accessible  to  the  officers  of  the  union,  and  he  always  freely 
recognized  the  "real  rights  and  interests  of  labor." 

The  reader  must  not  understand  that  Mr.  Hanna  became  an 
active  advocate  of  labor  organization  and  went  out  of  his  way 
to  favor  unions  among  his  employees.  His  early  record  merely 
shows  that  he  was  much  more  liberal  than  the  ordinary  employer 
in  recognizing  the  laborer's  right  to  organize,  and  much  more 
quick  to  perceive  the  advantages  to  both  parties  of  collective 
bargaining  and  regular  methods  of  industrial  conciliation.  But 
the  chief  fact  is  that  he  applied  to  his  own  business  the 
method  of  always  keeping  close  to  his  employees,  always  lis- 
tening respectfully  to  their  demands,  of  always  granting  the 
just  claims  of  his  men  as  a  body  and  of  always  treating  needy 
individuals  with  generosity.  At  a  time  when  many  American 
employers  overlooked  the  fact  that  their  relation  to  their  em- 
ployees was  a  human  as  well  as  an  economic  relation,  Mark 
Hanna  always  treated  them  as  far  as  he  could  as  men.  The 
subsequent  interest  which  he  took  in  labor  problems,  and  the 
subsequent  policy  which  he  advocated  as  a  means  of  avoiding 
industrial  disputes,  were  both  of  them  a  result  and  an  expression 
of  his  own  practice  as  an  employer. 


CHAPTER  X 

CHARACTERISTICS   IN   BUSINESS 

MARK  HANNA  has  been  described  as  an  industrial  pioneer* 
An  analytic  account  of  his  characteristics  as  a  business  man  will 
confirm  the  description.  The  typical  pioneer  of  the  period  of 
rapid  industrial  expansion  after  the  Civil  War  differed  in  cer- 
tain respects  from  both  the  agricultural  and  industrial  pioneers 
of  the  generation  preceding  the  war,  but  the  differences  be- 
tween the  two  types  are  insignificant  compared  to  the  funda- 
mental similarities.  Mr.  Hanna  was  not  only  the  sort  of  in- 
dustrial pioneer  whose  methods  and  achievements  illuminate 
and  dignify  the  economic  life  of  his  generation,  but  he  remained 
true  to  his  type,  even  after  many  of  his  own  early  associates 
had  departed  from  it.  His  political  career  and  system,  as  well 
as  his  business  career,  cannot  be  properly  understood  except  as 
the  expression  and  result  of  his  point  of  view  and  his  experience 
as  an  industrial  pioneer. 

Mark  Banna's  salient  characteristic  in  business  was  initiative. 
He  was  essentially,  if  not  exclusively,  an  entrepreneur.  He 
broke  new  ground.  He  started  and  developed  enterprises. 
The  Middle  West  of  the  seventies  and  eighties  was  seething 
with  industrial  and  commercial  opportunities  —  mines  to  be 
developed,  factories  to  be  started,  lines  of  trade  to  be  laid  out 
and  established,  mechanical  improvements  to  be  introduced 
and  perfected,  and  commerce  to  be  organized  with  increasing 
efficiency  and  economy.  In  order  to  take  advantage  of  these 
opportunities  a  man  needed  an  aggressive  will,  an  abundant 
energy,  and  an  alert,  shrewd,  and  comprehensive  mind.  Such 
qualifications  Mark  Hanna  conspicuously  possessed,  and  they 
found  full  and  effective  expression  in  the  policy  and  organiza- 
tion of  Rhodes  &  Co.,  and  M.  A.  Hanna  &  Co.  Their  policy 
aimed  at  the  encouragement  of  enterprises  which  would  produce 
commodities  to  be  handled  and  sold  by  the  firm;  and  its  exe- 

96 


CHARACTEEISTICS   IN   BUSINESS  97 

cution  demanded  business  qualities,  unusual  in  their  variety, 
in  their  intensity  and  in  the  individuality  of  their  combination. 

"He  was  choke-full  of  energy,"  says  Mr.  Robert  R.  Rhodes, 
his  brother-in-law  and  early  partner,  "  aggressive  and  progres- 
sive." "His  very  first  desire  was  to  be  the  head  and  front  of 
every  enterprise  in  which  he  was  engaged,"  says  Mr.  Andrew 
Squire,  his  attorney  for  twenty  years,  "to  be  the  leader  in  his 
own  business  and  his  own  affairs."  "He  was  always  leading," 
says  Mr.  A.  C.  Saunders,  another  early  associate,  "and  was 
quick  to  drop  one  thing  and  take  up  another.  It  is  a  great 
thing  for  a  man  to  know  when  to  let  go.  Mr.  Hanna  knew 
when  to  quit  —  that  was  one  of  the  secrets  of  his  apparent  good 
fortune.  He  was  tremendously  interested  in  anything  new. 
If  his  judgment  approved  of  it,  he  was  enthusiastic  in  push- 
ing it  and  testing  its  value.  But  he  quickly  sensed  a  failure 
and  turned  to  something  else  with  equal  energy  and  courage." 
This  passion  for  leadership  and  this  insistent  but  alert  initiative 
kept  pushing  him  forward  and  made  him  eager  to  seize  oppor- 
tunities, to  stamp  his  own  will  on  events,  and  exert  effective 
influence  and  power.  He  was  never  afraid  to  go  ahead  and  to 
take  the  risks  and  the  responsibilities  incidental  to  leadership. 
Under  the  economic  conditions  of  his  own  day  and  region,  his 
aggressive  and  dominating  will  resulted  inevitably  in  a  highly 
enterprising  business  policy,  which  he  was  able  successfully  to 
carry  out  because  his  initiative  was  sustained  by  an  equally 
emphatic  executive  ability. 

When  he  had  anything  to  do,  he  did  not  spare  himself  in  the 
doing  of  it.  "He  was  a  hard  worker, "  says  Mr.  Rhodes,  "and 
a  man  who  applied  himself  very  closely  to  his  business.  In  in- 
dustry he  was  unsurpassed."  Another  early  partner  adds 
testimony  to  the  same  effect.  According  to  Mr.  A.  C.  Saunders, 
his  industry  was  extraordinary.  "  He  was  an  inveterate  worker. 
When  I  first  went  into  his  office  he  had  to  travel  a  good  deal. 
He  would  return,  write  his  letters  and  be  off  again.  Few  peo- 
ple realized  how  hard  he  worked.  Often  he  used  to  stay  until 
late  at  night,  and  I  as  his  secretary  stayed  with  him.  He  would 
tire  me  out."  But  while  he  worked  hard  he  also  worked  well ; 
and  he  could  quickly  change  from  work  to  play.  During  the 
years  of  his  closest  application  to  business  he  entertained  freely, 


98          MAKCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

and  kept  very  much  alive  his  other  great  interest  —  which  was 
a  love  of  companionship. 

His  unusual  industry  was  directed  by  a  mind  which  had  mas- 
tered every  detail  of  his  business.  For  one  thing  he  was  dur- 
ing his  early  years  an  extremely  successful  salesman.  He  had 
the  gift  of  persuading  other  people  to  do  what  he  wanted  them 
to  do.  Mr.  Lucius  F.  Mellen,  an  early  competitor,  states  that 
"Mark  could  beat  us  all  in  a  trade  and  in  getting  customers." 
Mr.  E.  H.  Bourne,  who  succeeded  Mr.  Hanna  as  president  of 
the  Union  National  Bank,  but  who  was  at  one  time  his  com- 
petitor in  the  coal  business,  tells  of  an  occasion  on  which  the 
city  of  Chicago  was  asking  for  bids  on  a  large  quantity  of  coal. 
Coal  dealers  from  Pennsylvania  and  Ohio  flocked  to  Chicago 
to  try  for  the  business,  among  them  Mr.  Hanna.  Many  of 
the  salesmen  stopped  at  the  same  hotel,  and  they  were  smilingly 
informed  by  Mr.  Hanna  one  morning  that  the  contract  had  been 
awarded  to  him.  He  beat  the  field,  because,  according  to  Mr. 
Bourne,  he  was  remarkable  in  obtaining  the  information  he 
needed  and  then  in  taking  such  action  as  was  best  adapted  to 
get  the  business. 

Another  of  his  gifts  which  was  of  peculiar  value  to  his  business 
was  an  aptitude  for  mechanics.  An  understanding  of  machin- 
ery was  natural  to  him,  so  that  he  was  thoroughly  and  intelli- 
gently familiar  with  the  mechanical  details  of  a  business,  whose 
prosperity  became  in  the  course  of  years  more  and  more  a  matter 
of  the  efficient  use  of  machinery.  Mr.  A.  B.  Hough,  who  took 
many  trips  with  him  on  the  iron  ore  vessels  up  the  Lakes,  testi- 
fies to  his  exact  knowledge,  not  only  of  the  mechanism  of  the 
boats,  but  of  every  detail  of  its  operation,  including  the  capa- 
bilities of  its  officers,  the  details  of  its  expense  account  and  the 
like.  "He  used  to  surprise  me,"  says  Mr.  Squire,  "with  his 
knowledge  of  the  principles  of  mechanics.  He  and  Mr.  J.  F. 
Pankhurst  worked  out  a  plan,  by  which  a  dynamo  was  directly 
connected  to  one  of  the  engines  of  a  power  plant  in  which  they 
were  interested ;  and  I  think  I  am  right  in  saying  that  this  had 
never  been  done  before."  Partly  as  a  result  of  Mr.  Hanna's 
aptitude  for  mechanics,  his  firm  was  closely  associated  with  the 
development  of  the  machinery  necessary  for  the  more  economi- 
cal conduct  of  their  business.  We  have  already  seen  how  im- 


CHARACTERISTICS   IN   BUSINESS  99 

portant  was  the  part  which  H.  M.  Hanna  and  his  brother  played 
in  the  improvement  of  lake  shipping.  The  contribution  made  by 
the  firm  to  the  development  of  mining  and  coal  and  iron  hand- 
ling machinery  is  said  to  have  been  equally  substantial. 

A  business  which  was  constantly  expanding,  and  which  re- 
quired the  exercise  of  so  many  aptitudes  on  the  part  of  its  di- 
rector could  never  become  a  matter  of  routine.  Like  the  sea 
of  economic  conditions  by  which  it  was  surrounded,  it  was  al- 
ways in  a  condition  of  unstable  equilibrium.  New  adjustments 
were  continually  being  required,  and  the  making  of  these  adjust- 
ments demanded  the  constant  attention  of  a  steady,  alert,  all- 
round  man,  —  a  man  who  could  do  many  things  and  all  of  them 
sufficiently  well.  Specialism  on  the  one  hand  or  mere  conserva- 
tism on  the  other  would  either  have  wrecked  the  business  or 
entirely  changed  its  character.  Its  director  was  much  in  the 
same  situation  as  an  aviator,  who  must  sit  with  his  hand  on 
the  lever  ready  for  any  shifting  of  the  currents  of  air,  and  who 
knows  that  the  equilibrium  of  his  machine  depends  upon  his 
ability  to  keep  it  going. 

Mark  Hanna  in  a  sense  made  such  a  situation  for  himself. 
Or  rather  such  a  situation  was  the  inevitable  result  of  his  aggres- 
sive, enterprising,  dominating  personality.  He  was  always  on 
campaign  —  always  planning  the  movement  of  his  forces  so  as 
to  obtain  surer  and  completer  control  of  the  firm's  existing  ter- 
ritory or,  wherever  possible,  to  occupy  new  and  important 
strategic  points.  Such  campaigns  involve,  of  course,  the  tak- 
ing of  chances ;  but  only  one  of  his  partners  complains  that  he 
took  dangerous  and  unwise  chances.  Mr.  Rhodes  states  that 
Mr.  Hanna  sought  to  enlarge  the  firm's  business  in  ways  his 
partners  did  not  always  consider  prudent.  They  tried  to  hold 
him  down  —  not  always  with  success,  because  he  would  some- 
times go  ahead  without  even  consulting  them.  If  there  is  any 
truth  in  this  criticism,  it  applies  to  his  early  rather  than  to  his 
later  career.  In  the  beginning  he  may  have  taken  some  long 
chances  in  order  to  accelerate  the  progress  of  the  firm,  but 
later  his  boldness  was  tempered  with  caution.  Such  is  the 
unanimous  testimony  of  his  other  partners.  A  man  of  his 
disposition  necessarily  took  chances;  but  if  he  took  chances, 
he  knew  how  to  carry  them  off. 


100      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

Only  once  in  his  business  career  does  he  seem  to  have  been 
involved  in  a  precarious  position.  The  Globe  Ship-building 
Company,  of  which  H.  M.  Hanna  was  president,  and  in  which 
Mark  Hanna  was  heavily  interested,  had  built  five  ore-carrying 
vessels  for  Ferdinand  Schlesinger  of  Milwaukee.  Mr.  Schle- 
singer  was  a  business  ally  of  Mr.  Hanna's,  in  whom  the  latter 
had  great  personal  confidence.  He  was  the  owner  of  some  valu- 
able iron  mines  in  the  Menominee  range,  including  the  very 
exceptional  Chapin  mine,  whose  product  was  sold  through 
M.  A.  Hanna  &  Co.  Mr.  Schlesinger  gave  them  an  advanta- 
geous contract  for  carrying  the  ore  in  return  for  the  vessels  — 
thus  practically  pledging  the  mines  for  the  payment  of  the 
boats.  The  brothers  figured  that  at  the  end  of  six  years  the 
contract  for  transporting  the  ore  would  reimburse  the  com- 
pany for  the  cost  of  the  ships. 

The  arrangement  looked  good,  because  by  means  of  the  com- 
bination each  of  the  parties  to  the  contract  was  able  to  trans- 
act a  substantially  larger  amount  of  business.  Unfortunately, 
however,  Mr.  Schlesinger  overreached  himself  and  failed.  He 
had  built  a  railroad  in  order  to  haul  his  ore  to  the  Lakes,  and  he 
had  strained  his  resources  in  so  doing.  He  was  involved  to  the 
extent  of  several  million  dollars,  and  the  brothers  found  their 
heavy  investment  on  the  strength  of  the  contract  compromised. 
They  had  what  Mr.  H.  M.  Hanna  describes  as  a  lively  winter. 
They  had  to  spend  a  large  part  of  it  in  New  York  working  out  a 
settlement  which  would  enable  them  to  get  back  their  security. 
Finally  they  succeeded.  A  purchaser  was  found  .for  the  rail- 
road in  the  Northwestern  Railroad  Company.  H.  M.  Hanna 
took  back  the  boats,  and  M.  A.  Hanna  &  Co.  emerged  with 
the  Chapin  mine.  The  experience  was  an  unpleasant  one  for 
men  who,  in  their  own  business,  never  ventured  beyond  their 
depth;  but  it  proved  to  be  very  profitable  in  its  ultimate  re- 
sults. In  1899  the  Chapin  mine  was  sold  to  the  National  Steel 
Company  at  a  large  advance  over  its  cost. 

This  dangerous  complication  was  due  chiefly  to  Mark  Hanna's 
personal  confidence  in  Ferdinand  Schlesinger;  and  it  should 
be  added  that  his  confidence  was  not  misplaced.  Partly  owing 
to  Mr.  Hanna's  assistance,  Mr.  Schlesinger  later  made  another 
start,  obtained  possession  of  some  iron  mines  of  apparently 


CHARACTERISTICS   IN   BUSINESS  101 

doubtful  value,  and  was  justified  in  his  judgment  by  their 
development  into  extremely  valuable  properties.  Thus  he 
completely  recovered  himself,  and  the  alliance  between  Mr. 
Schlesinger  and  his  sons  and  M.  A.  Hanna  &  Co.  has  continued 
until  the  present  day. 

Mark  Hanna,  for  all  his  aggressive  initiative,  was  not  a  man 
to  skate  on  thin  ice.  He  took  certain  necessary  risks,  but  he 
was  never  a  speculator  in  the  sense  of  a  man  who  merely  gam- 
bled on  his  business  judgment.  He  was  an  organizer  and  a 
manager  as  well  as  an  initiator  of  enterprises.  The  different 
aspects  of  his  business  policy  hung  together,  and  aimed  event- 
ually at  giving  security  as  well  as  volume  to  the  business  of  the 
firm.  It  has  remained  what  he  made  it  —  viz.  a  business 
depending  on  personal  direction  and  in  some  measure  on  per- 
sonal relations ;  but  it  was  none  the  less  a  carefully  and  intelli- 
gently wrought  structure,  whose  stability  was  founded  on  sound 
economic  ideas. 

"In  my  thirty  years  of  business  experience,"  says  Mr.  Leon- 
ard C.  Hanna,  "I  have  never  known  a  mind  which  had  such  a 
firm  grasp  on  the  essentials  of  a  business  proposition";  and  this 
ability  to  fasten  on  essentials  seems  to  have  been  due  not  merely 
to  his  knowledge  of  the  conditions  affecting  any  particular  busi- 
ness affair,  but  to  thoroughly  sound  general  ideas  and  methods. 
He  had  the  faculty  of  "getting  in  right"  instead  of  wrong.  The 
accuracy  and  the  force  of  his  judgment  on  specific  business  ques- 
tions was  assisted  by  a  correct  general  estimate  of  the  dominant 
values  in  his  own  business  world.  H.  M.  Hanna  testifies  that 
his  brother  had  a  definite  and  comprehensive  conception  of 
the  channels,  through  which  the  great  American  domestic  com- 
merce was  bound  to  flow  and  of  the  opportunities,  which  were 
offered  to  Cleveland  business  men  of  assembling  the  raw  ma- 
terials necessary  to  the  steel  and  iron  industries  and  of  furnish- 
ing the  means  of  transportation.  His  other  brother,  Mr.  Leon- 
ard Hanna,  states  that  he  early  acquired  an  equally  definite 
idea  of  the  dominant  principle  underlying  the  characteristic 
American  industrial  organization  —  the  principle  of  keeping 
control  of  the  several  processes  by  means  of  which  raw  materials 
are  worked  up  for  use,  and  of  deriving  some  profit  from  all  of 
them.  It  was  because  the  business  of  M.  A.  Hanna  &  Co.  was 


102      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

based  partly  on  this  principle  that  it  escaped  the  fate  which 
might  have  befallen,  under  later  conditions,  an  unprotected  com- 
mission business. 

The  mixture  of  balance  and  prudence  in  his  business  policy, 
and  of  personal  flexibility  and  impersonal  stability  in  his  busi- 
ness achievements,  was  the  natural  expression  of  two  different 
aspects  of  Mark  Hanna's  disposition.  His  nature  was  impul- 
sive, and  his  impulses  frequently  had  an  explosive  expression, 
but  at  the  same  time  he  was  cautious  and  considerate.  Al- 
though his  will  was  insistent  and  aggressive,  it  was  not  head- 
strong. He  knew  what  he  could  and  could  not  do,  and  he 
knew  when  and  how  long  to  wait.  All  the  most  important  ac- 
tions of  his  life  were  the  result  of  unconscious  instincts  and  in- 
tentions rather  than  conscious  purposes ;  but  he  had  no  sooner 
acted  in  obedience  to  some  deep-rooted  personal  instinct  than 
his  candid  intelligence  began  with  coolness  and  caution  to  search 
for  the  best  means  of  making  his  will  prevail.  His  will  was 
strong  and  dominant,  largely  because  it  was  not  calculating; 
and  it  was  effective,  because  once  having  been  "set"  it  could 
call  to  its  assistance  the  resources  of  a  well-stored,  ingenious 
and  deliberate  mind.  Mark  Hanna's  experience  came  to  him 
as  the  result  for  the  most  part  of  his  instinctive  action,  but  he 
digested  and  used  it  by  virtue  of  a  capable  and  considerate 
intelligence. 

Almost  all  of  Mr.  Hanna's  close  associates  testify  to  this 
combination  of  unconscious  and  deliberate  elements  in  his  be- 
havior. Mr.  Leonard  C.  Hanna  remarks  that  while  his  de- 
cisions were  often  the  result  of  study  and  reflection,  they  also 
came  at  times  from  intuition.  Mr.  Andrew  Squire  says  that 
he  seemed  to  know  by  intuition  things  that  other  men  had  to 
acquire  by  reading  and  long  experience;  but  this  shrewd  wit- 
ness adds  that  Mr.  Hanna  was  not  ordinarily  a  man  of  quick 
judgment.  He  usually  canvassed  a  matter  thoroughly  before 
reaching  a  conclusion,  and  when  once  the  decision  was  made, 
he  was  hard  to  move.  "  While  Mr.  Hanna  was  quick  to  reach 
a  conclusion,"  says  Mr.  A.  C.  Saunders,  "he  was  not  hasty. 
He  thought  things  over  very  carefully.  He  would  give  a  mat- 
ter of  importance  considerable  time,  and  when  his  mind  was 
made  up,  go  into  it  with  his  whole  heart.  I  should  say  that  he 


CHARACTERISTICS   IN   BUSINESS  103 

was  both  a  bold  man  and  a  careful  one.  He  took  risks,  but  he 
never  went  beyond  his  depth,  and  invariably  had  his  enter- 
prises safely  financed  before  he  attempted  to  carry  them  out. 
All  of  us  consulted  him  on  practically  all  matters,  and  he  knew 
the  business  so  well  that  most  of  his  decisions  would  come 
quickly.  He  also  consulted  his  partners  and  frequently  acted 
on  their  recommendation.  He  was  usually  right,  but  he  could 
be  convinced  of  his  error  whenever  he  was  wrong." 

Mark  Hanna's  relation  with  other  men  brings  out,  however, 
his  best  qualities  in  business  as  in  politics.  His  great  success 
as  an  organizer  was  the  outcome  chiefly  of  his  faculty  of  getting 
good  work  and  loyal  cooperation  out  of  his  associates ;  and  the 
testimony  of  Mr.  Saunders  in  the  preceding  paragraph  affords 
some  inkling  as  to  the  way  in  which  such  results  were  obtained. 
He  organized  everything  with  which  he  was  concerned,  and 
in  organizing  he  was  obliged  to  delegate  responsibility.  But 
his  organizations  never  became  mere  machines.  They  were 
always  living  things,  to  which  their  director  imparted  his  own 
vitality.  He  had  the  faculty  of  supervising  without  inter- 
fering, and  of  making  his  own  general  responsibility  effective 
without  emasculating  the  specific  responsibilities  of  his  subordi- 
nates and  associates.  His  success  in  this  respect  was  not,  of 
course,  due  to  the  application  of  any  definite  rule,  but  to  the 
plane  of  mutual  confidence  and  understanding,  on  which  the 
relationship  was  established. 

The  keystone  of  his  business  structure  was  absolute  integrity 
in  the  fulfilment  of  his  contracts.  Mr.  Leonard  C.  Hanna  as- 
serts that  from  January,  1875,  when  he  entered  the  firm,  until 
the  day  of  Mark  Hanna's  death,  he  never  knew  the  binding 
quality  of  any  agreement,  no  matter  how  disadvantageous,  to 
be  questioned.  They  never  considered  for  a  moment  the  pos- 
sibility of  evading  an  engagement.  "I  have  sat  here, "  he  says, 
"  for  thirty  years  "  (his  statement  was  made  in  1905),  "  and  during 
that  time  I  have  seen  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars  lost  by 
contracts,  but  never  was  there  a  hint  that  the  obligation  was 
not  to  be  fulfilled  to  the  letter.  If  we  agreed  to  sell  pig-iron  at 
a  certain  price,  and  an  increase  in  the  cost  of  the  raw  materials 
caused  us  to  lose  a  very  large  sum  of  money,  the  man  who 
bought  the  iron  got  it.  In  1903  the  price  of  pig-iron  fell  five 


104      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS    LIFE    AND   WORK 

or  six  dollars  a  ton  very  quickly.  The  firm  of  M.  A.  Hanna 
&  Co.  had  a  large  amount  of  business  booked  ahead  at  the 
higher  price ;  and  after  the  fall  many  purchasers  of  our  iron 
backed  out  of  their  contracts,  and  many  others  tried  to  do  so. 
Although  we  could  not  sell  the  product  at  the  price,  we  took 
all  the  raw  materials  we  had  agreed  to  buy.  So  it  had  always 
been  during  the  business  career  of  Mark  Hanna."  Mr.  Hanna 
adds  that  his  brother  would  never  do  any  more  business  with  a 
man  who  repudiated  his  contracts. 

This  scrupulous  business  integrity  was  in  Mr.  Hanna's  case 
something  more  than  ordinary  honesty.  It  was  partly  an  ex- 
pression of  the  instinctive  loyalty  which  pervaded  all  his  per- 
sonal associations.  The  business  of  M.  A.  Hanna  &  Co.  was 
based  not  only  on  a  system  of  contracts,  but  also  upon  a  group 
of  alliances ;  and  the  substance  of  many  of  these  contracts  and 
all  of  these  alliances  consisted  of  a  personal  tie.  He  had  con- 
fidence in  other  people,  and  he  inspired  it  in  them.  His  firm, 
although  a  producer  itself,  could  not  have  become  and  remained 
the  sales-agent  of  so  many  independent  producers  unless  these 
men  knew  that  their  agent  was  dealing  fairly  with  them  and 
was  not  discriminating  for  or  against  any  one  of  its  customers. 
The  consequence  was  an  unusual  permanence  in  the  alliances, 
by  virtue  of  which  M.  A.  Hanna  &  Co.  procured  a  large  part  of 
its  business.  Its  relations  with  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad, 
the  Canbria  Iron  Co.,  with  the  Schlesingers  and  others,  began 
early  and  endured  throughout  and  beyond  Mr.  Hanna's  life. 

His  attorney,  Mr.  Andrew  Squire,  emphasizes  particularly 
one  peculiarity  of  Mr.  Hanna's  in  his  method  of  negotiating  a 
contract.  Instead  of  insisting  upon  those  aspects  of  an  agree- 
ment which  might  make  it  look  attractive  to  his  interlocutor, 
his  method  and  habit  was  frequently  to  bring  out  and  never  to 
disguise  the  dubious  aspects  of  a  proposed  transaction.  His 
motive  in  so  doing,  according  to  Mr.  Squire,  was  to  avoid  any 
possible  future  disappointment  or  misunderstanding,  and  so, 
even  if  that  particular  transaction  was  disadvantageous,  to 
create  or  maintain  confidential  relations  with  the  man.  Mr. 
Squire's  partner,  James  H.  Dempsey,  testifies  to  the  same  effect. 
"Mr.  Hanna,"  he  says,  "never  made  his  offer  so  small  that 
there  was  no  chance  of  the  other  man  taking  it  up.  In  making 


CHARACTERISTICS   IN  BUSINESS  105 

a  large  contract,  he  usually  knew  exactly  what  it  was  worth  to 
his  firm  and  he  invariably  based  his  proposals  on  a  live-and-let- 
live  rule.  He  never  sought  to  get  something  for  nothing  and 
he  never  drove  a  hard  bargain."  The  bargain,  that  is,  was  al- 
ways subordinated  to  the  obligation  of  dealing  fairly  with  the 
other  man. 

Mr.  James  J.  Hill  cites  a  specific  instance  of  Mark  Hanna's 
candor  and  scrupulous  fairness  in  business  negotiations  which  is 
worth  quoting  in  detail,  and  which  shows  why  his  associates 
had  implicit  confidence  hi  him.  In  1870  Mr.  Hill  went  to  Cleve- 
land to  buy  a  considerable  quantity  of  gas  coal.  His  intention 
was  to  purchase  Youghiogheny  coal,  and  he  stepped  into  the 
office  of  Rhodes  &  Co.,  met  Mr.  Hanna  and  asked  for  prices  on 
that  particular  stock.  Mr.  Hanna  replied  that  he  had  Youghio- 
gheny coal  for  sale,  but  that  his  firm  were  simply  agents  for  it. 
Then  going  to  a  window  and  pointing  across  the  street,  he  said : 
"  There  is  the  central  office  of  the  company  that  mines  the  sort 
of  coal  you  want,  and  my  suggestion  is  that  you  deal  directly 
with  them.  I  have  no  doubt  that  you  can  buy  it  as  cheaply  as 
we  can,  and  by  giving  them  your  order  you  will  save  the  com- 
mission." Mr.  Hill  was  so  much  impressed  by  Mr.  Hanna's 
fair  dealing  that  the  result  of  the  incident  was  a  series  of 
mutually  advantageous  business  transactions.  He  implies  that 
Mr.  Hanna  could  easily  either  have  sold  him  the  coal  he 
wanted  on  commission  or  else  sold  him  some  other  similar  coal 
as  a  substitute. 

Many  of  his  business  ties  were  so  enduring  and  so  personal 
that  they  were  rather  friendships  than  alliances.  Indeed,  al- 
most all  of  Mr.  Hanna's  close  business  associates  became  friends, 
for  he  was  never  satisfied  until  he  had  made  a  friend  out  of  a 
man  whom  he  liked  and  trusted.  Once  the  friendship  was 
formed  it  was  rarely  shattered.  Mr.  Hanna  would  not  only  do 
anything  in  his  power  to  keep  his  friend,  but  he  often  became 
blind  to  the  man's  faults.  Ordinarily  he  was  a  shrewd  judge 
of  other  people.  His  clear  bright  brown  eyes  had  in  them  a 
searching  quality,  which  made  the  object  of  his  inspection  feel 
transparent  and  exposed.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  usually  put 
a  correct  estimate  upon  his  associates  and  assistants  —  as  may 
be  inferred  from  his  success  as  an  organizer.  But,  of  course, 


106      MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

he  made  his  mistakes  in  his  business  as  well  as  in  his  political 
allies,  and  if  he  had  come  to  have  any  friendship  for  a  man  whom 
he  had  made  a  mistake  in  trusting,  it  was  hard  to  convince  him 
of  his  error.  He  would  remain  faithful  to  the  tie  —  even  when 
the  man  had,  to  the  satisfaction  of  other  people,  shown  himself 
to  be  unworthy,  not  merely  of  loyalty,  but  sometimes  of  respect. 

Inevitably  a  man  like  Mr.  Hanna  made  enemies  in  business 
as  well  as  friends.  He  had,  indeed,  no  gift  for  personal  quar- 
rels as  he  had  a  gift  for  personal  loyalties.  He  did  not  cherish 
grudges.  There  was  nothing  vindictive  in  his  nature.  But  he 
liked  to  have  his  own  way,  and  if  any  other  man  blocked  a  path 
which  he  believed  himself  entitled  to  travel,  the  obstructor 
might  well  be  somewhat  roughly  and  ruthlessly  pushed  aside. 
When  he  was  in  a  fight  he  fought  hard,  and  like  all  strong  and 
self-willed  men  he  enjoyed  fighting.  Probably  he  made  cer- 
tain unnecessary  enmities.  He  was  at  times  during  his  business 
career  an  unpleasantly  plain-dealer.  Certain  of  his  associates 
testify,  indeed,  that  never  in  their  presence  was  he  brusque  or 
harsh ;  but  evidently  he  could  be  harsh,  when  he  was  rubbed  or 
had  rubbed  himself  the  wrong  way.  One  unfavorable  witness 
states  that  during  his  early  years  he  "was  positively  indifferent 
to  popularity." 

The  witness  quoted  above  may  well  be  exaggerating,  for  he 
admitted  some  measure  of  prejudice.  But  there  is  sufficient 
corrobation  for  the  general  statement  that  he  might  at  times  be, 
or  appear  to  be,  arbitrary  and  self-assertive.  He  was  a  quick, 
impulsive  man,  impatient  of  what  seemed  to  him  unnecessary 
and  perverse  opposition,  and  when  excited  he  might  become 
peremptory  in  manner  and  explosive  in  speech.  He  might  in  the 
heat  of  the  moment  blurt  out  his  opinions  without 'any  mincing 
of  words,  and  without,  perhaps,  very  much  consideration  for 
the  feelings  of  others.  Many  men  who  subsequently  became 
his  friends  and  warm  admirers  were,  before  they  came  to  know 
him,  prejudiced  against  him  by  his  manner  and  local  reputation. 

Judge  William  B.  Sanders,  who  was  for  many  years  associated 
with  Mr.  Squire  and  Mr.  Dempsey  as  attorneys  for  Mr.  Hanna, 
says  of  him:  "In  Mr.  Raima's  business  life,  before  he  became 
known  as  a  national  politician,  he  had  not  learned  the  art  of 
saying  'No'  without  offence.  He  was  plain  and  quick,  and 


CHARACTERISTICS   IN   BUSINESS  107 

frequently  hurt  and  offended  people  with  whom  he  had  a 
difference.  However,  a  change  came  over  him  in  this  respect. 
I  remember  that  I  was  hi  his  room  in  St.  Louis  during  the  Re- 
publican Convention  of  1896  when  a  delegation  of  colored  men, 
delegates  representing  several  Southern  states,  came  to  see  him. 
They  were  after  money,  and  he  knew  it.  In  the  old  days  he 
would  have  kicked  them  out  of  the  room ;  but  on  this  occasion 
he  politely  refused  them  without  hurting  their  feelings."  One 
cannot  help  wishing  that  under  the  circumstances  he  had  been 
less  diplomatic,  and  had  ruthlessly  hurt  their  feelings  —  as- 
suming, of  course,  that  it  was  their  feelings  which  would  have 
been  chiefly  hurt  by  the  act  of  kicking  them  out  of  the  room. 

The  foregoing  account  of  Mark  Hanna  will,  I  think,  justify 
the  description  of  him  as  a  business  man  who  carried  over  into 
the  period  of  industrial  expansion  the  best  characteristics  of 
the  pioneer.  The  industrial  pioneer  of  the  seventies  needed 
qualities  and  methods  different  in  certain  respects  from  those 
of  the  early  pioneers.  Mr.  Hanna,  for  instance,  was  a  great  or- 
ganizer, and  he  could  not  have  made  his  success  unless  he  had 
believed  both  in  organization  and  in  the  delegation  of  power 
and  responsibility.  But  like  them,  he  was  an  all-round  man  of 
action,  whose  behavior  was  determined  chiefly  by  instinctive 
motives  and  external  conditions,  and  who  used  his  intelligence 
merely  for  the  purpose  of  making  his  will  effective.  Like  them 
he  was  performing  a  necessary  preliminary  work  of  economic 
construction,  and  one  in  which  for  the  most  part  his  own  in- 
terest as  a  maker  and  an  organizer  of  enterprises  was  coincident 
with  the  public  interest.  As  with  them,  the  aggressive  individu- 
alism of  his  private  business  life  obtained  dignity  from  its  as- 
sociation with  an  essential  task  of  social  and  economic  construc- 
tion. And  finally,  as  in  the  case  of  the  better  pioneers,  he  had 
the  feelings  and  the  outlook  of  a  man  who  has  done  more  than 
accumulate  a  fortune.  His  methods  in  business  and  the  way 
in  which  he  gave  personality  and  humanity  to  his  business 
life  all  tended  to  the  fulfilment  of  social  as  well  as  individual 
purposes. 

His  individual  social  edifice  had  the  disadvantages  as  well 
as  the  advantages  of  being  wrought  at  the  prompting  of  in- 
stinctive rather  than  conscious  motives.  If  it  had  contained  a 


108      MARCUS  ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

larger  conscious  element,  it  probably  would  not  have  been  so 
effective,  because  it  would  not  have  squared  in  other  respects 
with  his  essentially  objective  disposition.  But  its  unconscious- 
ness always  made  him  callous  to  the  fact  that  certain  phases 
of  his  business  demanded  essentially  unsocial  action  —  such,  for 
instance,  as  influencing  elections  to  the  Common  Council  in 
the  interest  of  his  street  railway  company.  He  was,  that  is, 
a  man  of  wholesome  and  varied  social  instincts  which  had  a 
powerful  and  edifying  effect  upon  his  life  and  the  life  of  his  as- 
sociates, but  he  was  not  a  man  of  civic  and  social  ideals  —  in 
which  again  he  was  true  to  his  pioneer  type. 

The  fact,  however,  that  his  business  methods  were  born  of 
a  deeply  rooted  American  tradition  and  had  a  definite  social 
value  was  salutary.  It  enabled  him  to  draw  for  the  success  of 
his  subsequent  political  career  upon  sources  of  energy  outside 
of  himself.  In  case  he  had  become  the  kind  of  a  business  man 
that  many  rich  Americans  of  his  generation  did  become,  any 
but  an  insignificant  political  success  would  have  been  impos- 
sible. A  financier  may  buy  or  earn  a  politicial  position,  but  he 
cannot  accomplish  much  by  means  of  it.  Mark  Hanna  al- 
ways remained  a  Cleveland  merchant,  and  his  business  remained, 
as  I  have  said,  personal  and  local.  He  rarely,  if  ever,  embarked 
in  enterprises  which  he  did  not  personally  control.  He  never 
"set  up"  as  a  capitalist,  and  bought  with  his  money  other  men 
to  do  his  work.  He  put  back  his  profits,  either  in  the  coal  and 
iron  business,  or  in  some  other  local  enterprise,  over  which  he 
exercised  personal  supervision.  All  his  enterprises  were  Cleve- 
land enterprises  or  immediately  related  thereto.  He  was  rooted 
in  his  native  business  soil,  and  his  personality  and  his  work 
depended  for  their  value  on  local  associations  and  responsibili- 
ties. He  had  too  sound  an  instinct  for  the  sources  of  his  own 
personal  dignity  and  power  to  let  himself  become  a  homeless 
financier.  The  consequence  was  that  when  he  entered  politics 
as  a  business  man,  he  represented  a  vital  and  a  genuinely  popu- 
lar American  business  tradition. 

He  never  was  essentially  a  money-maker.  If  he  had  been, 
he  might  have  made  very  much  more  money  than  he  actually 
did.  His  business  life  is  inextricably  entangled  with  his  do- 
mestic and  his  social  life.  He  never  hesitated  either  to  spend 


CHARACTERISTICS   IN   BUSINESS  109 

money  or  to  sacrifice  the  making  of  it  in  the  interest  of  something 
better  worth  while.  As  much  as  any  very  successful  business 
man,  and  far  more  than  the  average,  Mark  Hanna  earned  by 
personal  economic  services  his  private  fortune.  He  made  a 
genuine  contribution  to  the  economic  development  of  the  Cleve- 
land district  at  a  time  when  such  contributions  were  not  dis- 
proportionately rewarded  by  any  accession  of  scarcity  values. 
When  his  political  enemies  stamped  the  sign  of  the  dollar  on 
Mark  Hanna,  they  literally  turned  his  relation  to  money  upside 
down.  What  they  should  have  done  was  to  stamp  on  every 
dollar  he  made  the  initials  "M.  A.  H."  —  the  Hanna  mark. 


CHAPTER  XI 

BEGINNINGS   IN   POLITICS 

WE  have  already  seen  that  about  1880  the  range  of  Mark 
Hanna's  business  interests  began  suddenly  to  widen.  The 
dozen  years  following  1867  were  spent  chiefly  in  a  laborious 
and  enterprising  effort  to  establish  the  business  of  Rhodes 
&  Co.  on  firm  and  broad  foundations  and  to  expand  it  to  the 
limit  of  its  opportunities.  The  full  fruits  of  this  effort  were 
not  gathered  until  after  the  revival  of  business  in  1879.  Thence- 
forward Mark  Hanna  had  the  spare  money  and  the  leisure  to 
undertake  other  enterprises.  He  emerges  as  one  of  a  score  of 
men  who  had  become  peculiarly  prominent  in  Cleveland  busi- 
ness; and  almost  simultaneously  he  began  also  to  obtain  a 
certain  prominence  in  local  politics.  During  the  campaign 
of  1880,  resulting  in  the  election  of  James  A.  Garfield,  he  begins 
to  count  as  a  politician. 

His  interest  in  politics  does  not  date  from  1880  any  more  than 
his  interest  in  business  dates  from  1867.  He  had  always  been 
interested  in  politics,  although  there  is  some  conflict  of  testi- 
mony as  to  the  point  of  departure  of  his  earlier  political  activity. 
The  statement  has  been  made  that  his  street  railway  interests 
first  induced  him  to  take  a  hand  in  the  political  game ;  but  of 
all  the  eye-witnesses  of  Mr.  Hanna's  career  only  one  lends  any 
support  to  this  explanation.  Mr.  Charles  F.  Leach,  formerly 
Collector  of  Customs  in  Cleveland,  and  one  of  Mr.  Hanna's 
own  appointees,  states  that  before  he  knew  intimately  his  sub- 
sequent political  chief,  he  had  been  prejudiced  against  Mr. 
Hanna.  "I  had  heard  of  him  as  a  local  politician  for  what  ap- 
peared to  be  his  business  interests.  I  had  known  him  to  stand 
at  a  corner  on  the  West  Side  and  peddle  tickets  for  a  candi- 
date to  the  City  Council  who  was  supposed  to  be  all  right  on 
street  railroad  matters  or  anything  else  that  might  come  up." 
That  Mr.  Hanna  at  one  time  was  not  indifferent  to  the  kind  of 

110 


BEGINNINGS   IN   POLITICS  111 

men  who  were  elected  to  the  City  Council  and  their  attitude 
towards  the  street  railway  is  true;  but  it  is  equally  true  that 
this  was  only  a  later  and  incidental  phase  of  his  political  ac- 
tivity. The  main  spring  thereof  is  to  be  sought  in  a  wholly 
different  direction. 

The  generation  of  business  men  to  which  Mr.  Hanna  belonged, 
particularly  in  the  Middle  West,  took  during  their  early  lives  a 
more  earnest  and  innocent  interest  in  politics  than  have  their 
successors.  Before  the  war  almost  all  the  good  citizens  of  Ohio 
had  been  somewhat  active  in  politics.  After  the  war  political 
activity  became  rapidly  more  and  more  professional;  but  the 
average  business  man  still  participated  to  a  large  extent  in  practical 
political  work.  He  was  likely  to  attend  the  primaries  and  per- 
haps spend  the  whole  of  election  day  at  the  polls.  He  did  so 
because  he  was  a  Republican  or  a  Democrat,  not  so  much 
from  inheritance,  habit  or  interest,  as  from  personal  conviction. 
The  memory  of  the  war  was  still  vivid.  Republicanism  was 
still  associated  with  patriotic  unionism,  Democracy  with  se- 
cession. The  Republican  party  in  particular  was  still  made  up 
of  its  founders. 

Mark  Hanna  was  a  primitive  Republican.  His  family  had 
been  antislavery  Whigs.  His  first  presidential  vote  had  been 
cast  for  Lincoln.  He,  his  brother  and  most  of  his  friends  had 
served  with  the  Northern  forces  during  the  war.  He  was  a 
Republican  up  to  the  hilt  —  a  Republican  so  black  as  to  make 
him  an  undesirable  son-in-law  in  the  eyes  of  an  ardent  Demo- 
crat. But  when  a  man  of  Mark  Hanna's  disposition  believes 
in  anything,  he  does  not  ruminate  about  it :  he  acts  on  it.  Some 
sort  of  action  was  his  essential  method  of  personal  expres- 
sion. Indeed,  it  might  be  truer  to  put  it  the  other  way.  His 
strong  convictions  were  in  a  sense  the  by-products  of  his  actions. 
Any  conviction  upon  which  he  failed  to  act  would  have  lan- 
guished. He  could  scarcely  have  remained  a  convinced  Re- 
publican unless  he  had  actually  participated  in  Republican 
party  business. 

That  he  did  so  from  the  start  there  is  abundant  proof.  His 
wife  says  that  ever  since  the  beginning  of  their  acquaintance 
he  used  to  attend  the  primaries  and  perform  active  work  at 
the  polls  on  election  day.  As  early  as  1869  he  was  elected  a 


112      MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

member  in  the  Cleveland  Board  of  Education.  He  served  for 
two  years  in  this  capacity,  but  did  not  attend  much  more 
than  half  the  meetings  of  the  board.  It  must  be  remembered 
that  the  business  of  Rhodes  &  Co.  kept  him  travelling  a 
great  deal  of  the  time.  That  he  was  elected  for  the  position 
indicates  a  certain  political  prominence  in  his  own  ward.  That 
he  accepted  an  " honor"  office  of  that  kind  indicates  some  pub- 
lic spirit.  That  he  was  never  reflected  may  mean  that  he  could 
not  give  as  much  time  as  was  necessary  to  the  work.  He  was 
accustomed  even  then  to  dealing  with  large  affairs  in  an  au- 
thoritative way,  and  he  may  well  have  found  the  petty  details 
of  the  work  and  its  lack  of  any  real  opportunity  for  effective 
achievement  irksome  and  futile. 

Mr.  Andrew  Squire  and  Mr.  A.  C.  Saunders  recollect  Mr. 
Hanna  as  an  active  party  worker  in  the  old  ninth  ward  towards 
the  middle  of  the  seventies.  He  could  always  be  counted  on  for 
presence  at  the  polls  and  at  the  primaries,  and  for  assistance  in 
the  task  of  getting  the  vote  out  and  securing  an  honest  count. 
Mr.  Daniel  Myers,  a  wholesale  druggist  in  Cleveland,  asserts 
that  when  a  young  man,  he  remembers  attending  a  political 
meeting  at  which  Mr.  Hanna  also  was  present.  The  date  was 
not  far  from  1870.  The  object  of  the  meeting  was  to  stir  up 
opposition  to  a  ward  boss  who  had  been  controlling  the  nomina- 
tions for  the  office  of  city  councilman.  The  foremost  business 
men  in  the  district  attended  the  conference,  and  Mr.  Hanna 
was  one  of  the  prominent  speakers.  He  urged  upon  his  hearers 
the  need  of  an  open  and  honest  primary  election,  and  the  neces- 
sity of  participation  by  the  " better  element"  of  the  ward  in 
active  political  work. 

The  date  of  another  similar  incident  may  be  fixed  definitely 
in  1873.  At  that  time  the  Cleveland  municipal  elections  were 
held  in  the  spring,  and  were  preceded  by  only  a  very  short 
campaign.  The  Republicans  nominated  John  Huntington. 
The  nomination  was  unfit,  and  many  Republicans,  including 
Mark  Hanna,  decided  to  bolt.  A  meeting  was  called,  in  which 
Mr.  Hanna  was  prominent,  and  it  agreed  to  support  Charles  A. 
Otis,  a  Democrat,  but  not  one  who  had  been  active  in  politics. 
Mr.  Otis  was  elected,  while  the  rest  of  the  Democratic  ticket 
was  defeated. 


MARK  HANNA  ABOUT  1877 


BEGINNINGS   IN   POLITICS  113 

These  instances  sufficiently  indicate  that  Mr.  Hanna's 
active  interest  in  politics  long  antedated  his  connection  with 
the  street  railway.  Neither  he  nor  his  wife  became  even  par- 
tial owners  in  the  West  Side  Street  Railway  until  1876,  and 
not  until  six  years  later  did  he  undertake  the  management  of 
that  corporation.  His  business  affairs  had  nothing  to  do  with 
his  entrance  into  politics,  and  he  did  not  remain  in  politics 
in  their  interest.  Quite  apart  from  the  evident  fact  that  any 
benefit  which  his  business  could  derive  from  his  political  con- 
nection would  only  be  incidental,  no  one  who  understands 
the  sort  of  a  man  Mark  Hanna  was  can  believe  for  an  instant 
that  his  interest  in  politics  could  be  derived  from  any  source 
outside  of  itself. 

He  could  no  more  help  being  interested  in  politics,  and  in 
expressing  that  interest  in  an  eager  effort  to  elect  men  to 
office,  than  he  could  help  being  interested  in  business,  his  family 
or  his  food.  His  disposition  was  active,  sympathetic  and  ex- 
pansive; and  it  was  both  uncritical  and  uncalculating.  He 
accepted  from  his  surroundings  the  prevailing  ideas  and  modes 
of  action.  He  went  into  business  because  business  was  the 
normal  career  for  a  good  American.  The  selection  of  both  his 
dominant  and  his  subordinate  business  interests  was  influ- 
enced, as  we  have  seen,  more  by  personal  motives  than  by  any 
intention  of  making  a  large  fortune.  In  the  same  way  he  went 
into  politics,  because  politics  was  the  other  primary  activity 
demanded  of  him  by  his  local  surroundings.  Under  prevail- 
ing conditions  it  was  an  inevitable  way  of  asserting  himself 
for  a  man  who  had  an  instinctive  disposition  towards  an  ex- 
pansive all-round  life  —  so  far  as  such  a  life  could  be  reached 
in  action.  He  could  no  more  have  entered  or  remained  in  politics 
merely  from  a  calculating  motive,  good  or  bad,  than  he  could 
have  planned  to  become  a  poet. 

He  went  into  business  partly  as  a  bread-winner  and  partly 
because  it  took  business  to  keep  him  busy.  He  went  into  poli- 
tics as  a  citizen.  The  motive,  in  so  far  as  it  was  conscious, 
was  undoubtedly  patriotic.  That  he  should  wish  to  serve 
his  country  as  well  as  himself  and  his  family  was  rooted  in  his 
make-up.  If  he  proposed  to  serve  his  country,  a  man  of  his 
disposition  and  training  could  do  so  only  by  active  work  in 


114      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

party  politics.  Patriotism  meant  to  him  Republicanism.  Good 
government  meant  chiefly  Republican  government.  Hence 
the  extreme  necessity  of  getting  good  Republicans  elected, 
and  the  absolute  identity  hi  his  mind  and  in  the  minds  of  most 
of  his  generation  between  public  and  party  service. 

Mark  Hanna  differed  from  the  majority  of  successful  business 
men  of  his  generation  hi  that  he  continued  to  live  up  to  his 
conviction  of  the  identity  between  active  personal  participa- 
tion in  party  politics  and  public  service.  During  the  sev- 
enties and  eighties  successful  business  men  were  becoming  so 
much  absorbed  in  making  money  that  their  participation  in 
politics  was  ceasing  to  be  active  and  personal.  The  work  which 
they  formerly  did  in  politics  was  being  more  and  more  taken 
over  by  professional  politicians.  But  there  was  a  minority 
of  business  men  who  never  consented  to  any  such  division  of 
labor.  They  continued  to  participate  in  active  political  work, 
and  to  proclaim  by  their  behavior  that  business  men  had  no 
right  to  shirk  or  shift  their  share  of  personal  political  responsi- 
bility. Among  them  was  Mr.  Hanna  ;  and  in  remaining  true  to 
the  close  association  between  business  and  politics,  he  was  loyal 
to  a  time-honored  and  fundamental  American  tradition.  Once 
more  he  was  proving  himself  to  be  the  descendant  of  the 
pioneer  who  made  no  sharp  distinction  between  private  and 
public  interest,  and  who  testified  to  the  coincidence  between 
private  and  public  interest  by  the  association  in  their  own  lives 
between  business  and  political  activity. 

A  number  of  men  familiar  with  the  political  annals  of  Cleve- 
land during  the  seventies  corroborate  Mr.  Myers  in  the  assertion 
that  a  part  of  Mark  Hanna's  early  political  activity  consisted  in 
fighting  the  growing  political  power  of  the  petty  "  bosses."  He 
used  to  go  to  the  business  men  of  his  ward  individually,  and  try 
to  persuade  them  that  they  ought  to  be  more  actively  interested 
in  local  municipal  affairs — that  they,  the  taxpayers,  and  not  the 
ward  heelers,  should  rule  the  city.  Little  by  little  he  organized 
the  business  men  in  his  neighborhood,  and  for  a  while  he  had  the 
local  "bosses"  of  the  West  Side  more  or  less  under  control. 
In  this  connection  it  should  be  remembered  that  the  first  phase 
of  the  municipal  reform  movement  all  over  the  country  took 
just  this  form  of  an  attempt  to  renew  the  interest  of  business 


BEGINNINGS   IN   POLITICS  115 

men  in  local  politics ;  and  the  fact  that  Mark  Hanna  himself, 
like  most  business  men,  may  have  had  certain  private  interests 
mixed  in  with  his  opposition  to  the  local  " bosses"  must  not 
blind  us  to  the  meaning  of  his  early  campaign  for  reform.  As 
a  business  man  and  an  active  politician  he  was  fighting  the 
fact  that  business  and  politics  were  being  specialized  and 
divided.  He  was  seeking  to  escape  from  the  awkward  alter- 
native of  being  obliged  either  to  fight  the  political  mercenaries 
or  to  conciliate  them. 

Now  Mark  Hanna  was  not  by  disposition  a  reformer.  He 
was  a  man  of  action,  whose  peculiar  strength  was  to  consist 
in  his  thorough  grasp  of  all  the  conditions,  human  as  well  as 
material,  underlying  immediately  successful  achievement. 
A  reformer,  even  when  he  is  not  essentially  a  critic  and  a 
man  of  words,  is  obliged  to  subordinate  action  to  preliminary 
agitation.  Mark  Hanna  was  not  made  to  fight  deeply  rooted 
political  abuses.  He  was  not  made  to  follow  for  long  any  path 
which  did  not  lead  to  a  visible  and  accessible  goal.  He  soon 
abandoned  his  fight  against  the  local  "  bosses,"  and  eventually 
he  came  to  accept  their  cooperation  as  a  condition  of  practical 
political  achievement.  But  his  alliance  with  the  professional 
politicians  never  amounted  to  fusion.  Both  his  methods  and 
purposes  remained  different.  He  always  continued  to  be  the 
business  man  in  politics  who  was  keeping  alive  in  his  own 
policy  and  behavior  the  traditional  association  between  busi- 
ness and  politics,  between  private  and  public  interest,  which 
was  gradually  being  shattered  by  the  actual  and  irresistible 
development  of  American  business  and  political  life. 

In  order,  consequently,  to  understand  Mark  Hanna's  point  of 
departure  in  politics  we  must  bear  in  mind  (1)  that  he  was  an 
industrial  pioneer,  and  instinctively  took  to  politics  as  well  as 
business;  (2)  that  in  politics  as  in  business  he  wanted  to  ac- 
complish results;  (3)  that  politics  meant  to  him  active  party 
service;  (4)  that  successful  party  service  meant  the  acceptance 
of  prevailing  political  methods  and  abuses;  and  (5)  finally  that 
he  was  bound  by  the  instinctive  consistency  of  his  nature  to  rep- 
resent in  politics,  not  merely  his  other  dominant  interest,  but 
the  essential  harmony  between  the  interests  of  business  and 
those  of  the  whole  community. 


116      MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

In  his  first  public  appearance  in  national,  as  well  as  in  local, 
politics  he  was  inevitably  cast  for  his  one  great  part  of  a  busi- 
ness man.  It  occurred  during  the  Garfield  campaign  in  1880, 
in  which  he  was  intensely  interested,  because  the  Republican 
candidate  was  not  only  from  Ohio,  but  from  the  vicinity  of 
Cleveland.  He  is  stated  to  have  originated  the  idea  of  a 
Business  Man's  Republican  Campaign  Club,  and  of  organizing 
out  of  the  business  men  of  Cleveland  an  effective  campaign 
instrument.  Among  other  services  to  the  cause  the  club  ar- 
ranged a  parade,  in  which  Mark  Hanna  carried  a  torch  among 
other  patriotic  and  busy  partisans.  The  idea  had  a  great  suc- 
cess. Similar  clubs  were  organized  in  other  cities,  and  aroused 
the  interest  of  business  men  in  the  election.  It  is  significant 
that  in  1880  business  men  were  first  beginning  to  become 
conscious  of  their  attachment  to  the  Republican  party  and  that 
Mark  Hanna  was  associated  with  the  first  advertisement  of 
the  association. 

Another  incident  connected  with  the  Garfield  campaign  tes- 
tifies both  to  Mr.  Hanna's  active  participation  in  the  work  of 
the  campaign  and  to  his  readiness  to  rise  to  an  occasion  and 
assume  a  risky  responsibility.  James  A.  Garfield's  nomina- 
tion had  not  been  cordially  greeted  by  the  large  faction  in  the 
party  who  had  supported  in  the  Convention  the  candidacy  of 
General  Grant,  and  who  remained  sulky  after  its  defeat.  This 
very  apparent  division  in  the  party  was  a  confession  of  weak- 
ness; and  in  order  that  the  secrets  of  the  confessional  might 
remain  obscure  to  the  public,  the  party  managers  organized  a 
mass  meeting  at  Warren,  Ohio,  just  to  show  to  the  public  how 
united  such  a  party  could  be.  Not  only  was  General  Grant 
himself  to  attend,  but  also  Roscoe  Conkling  from  New  York, 
Simon  Cameron  from  Pennsylvania,  General  John  A.  Logan  of 
Illinois,  and  other  conspicuous  Grant  Republicans. 

According  to  a  prearranged  plan  the  different  members  of 
the  party  were  to  meet  in  Cleveland  and  then  be  forwarded  to 
Warren  by  the  Erie  Railroad.  Mark  Hanna  was  put  in  charge 
of  the  transportation  of  the  harmonious  Republican  orchestra, 
and  on  his  own  initiative  and  without  consulting  anybody  he 
decided  to  make  the  gathering  useful  to  the  party's  candi- 
date as  well  as  to  the  party.  He  arranged  that  the  train  should 


BEGINNINGS   IN   POLITICS  117 

return  from  Warren  by  way  of  Mentor,  where  General  Gar- 
field  lived,  and  where  he  was  continually  receiving  his  loyal 
party  associates. 

What  followed  is  described  by  Mr.  James  H.  Kennedy,  who 
was  reporting  the  whole  affair  for  the  Cleveland  Herald.  After 
the  meeting  was  over,  the  harmonious  guests  were  being  enter- 
tained at  luncheon  by  Senator  Harry  B.  Perkins  in  his  house  at 
Warren.  Mr.  Hanna  called  at  the  house  and  was  shown  into 
the  dining  room.  "General,"  said  he,  addressing  Grant,  "it 
has  been  arranged  that  we  return  to  Cleveland  by  way  of  Mentor, 
and  if  you  propose  to  stop  and  see  General  Garfield,  we  shall 
have  to  start  in  a  very  short  time."  He  made  this  announce- 
ment in  public  so  as  to  bring  the  question  straight  to  the  at- 
tention of  Grant.  Conkling  did  not  want  to  go  to  Mentor, 
and  when  he  did  not  want  to  do  anything  he  had  a  way  of  em- 
phatically looking  the  part.  His  brow  was  like  a  thunder  cloud. 
Grant  saw  the  danger  and  did  not  dodge  the  issue.  "We  will 
go  to  Mentor,"  he  said  to  Mr.  Hanna,  and  Conkling  sullenly 
acquiesced.  Accordingly  the  train  was  stopped  at  General 
Garfield's  town,  and  the  distinguished  Republicans  paid  their 
respects  to  the  standard-bearer,  whereby  the  country  was  given 
a  still  more  striking  proof  of  the  wilful  harmony  which  pre- 
vailed in  the  Republican  party. 

Mark  Hanna's  interest  in  the  campaign  was,  of  course,  in- 
creased by  the  fact  that  in  May,  1880,  he  had  bought  the  Cleve- 
land Herald.  Thus  he  provided  himself  with  a  costly  mirror 
in  which  his  ardent  Republicanism  was  reflected.  And  in 
those  days  Republicanism  was  very  ardent  and  very  inno- 
cent —  particularly  when  the  Republican  candidate  lived  in 
one's  native  state,  not  far  from  one's  home  town.  On  the  day 
following  Garfield's  election  the  Herald  printed  in  great 
pica  type,  as  an  appropriate  leading  editorial  upon  that  glori- 
ous event,  a  whole  psalm  of  praise  and  thanks  to  the  Lord : 
"  The  Lord  openeth  the  eyes  of  the  blind  !  The  Lord  loveth  the 
righteous  !" 

During  the  years  immediately  following  the  election  of  Gen- 
eral Garfield  the  range  of  Mark  Hanna's  political  interests 
gradually  broadened.  He  became  a  local  political  leader  of 
importance,  and  evidently  had  some  influence  upon  the  party 


118      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

nominations  for  city  and  county  offices.  He  had  ceased  to  fight 
the  machine  and  had  become  one  of  its  allies  and  supporters. 
It  was  the  period  of  his  ownership  of  the  Herald  and  of  his 
management  of  the  West  Side  Street  Railway;  and  both  of 
these  interests  helped  to  involve  him  more  and  more  in  politics. 
In  the  spring  of  1883  George  W.  Gardner  was  nominated  for 
mayor  by  the  Republicans.  The  Leader  charged  Mr.  Hanna 
with  responsibility  for  the  nomination,  which  was  considered 
undesirable  for  no  other  reason,  apparently,  than  the  candi- 
date's association  with  the  owner  of  the  Herald;  and  Mr. 
Gardner's  election  was  consequently  fought  with  bitterness, 
and  finally  with  success,  by  Mr.  Cowles.  It  was  one  among  a 
long  series  of  factional  fights  among  Cleveland  Republicans, 
the  result  of  which  frequently  cut  entirely  away  the  small 
Republican  majority  in  the  city. 

During  these  years,  also,  Mark  Hanna  was  assuming  for  the 
first  time  a  certain  importance  in  state  politics.  His  services 
during  the  Garfield  campaign  and  his  liberal  contributions  to 
campaign  funds  designated  him  for  recognition  at  the  hands  of 
the  party.  Mr.  George  W.  Gardner  states  that  he  suggested 
Mr.  Hanna's  name  to  the  state  committee  as  a  member  of  the 
important  subcommittee  on  finance.  Mr.  Hanna  was  named 
at  the  same  time  as  Charles  Foster,  with  whom  he  was  closely 
and  cordially  associated  in  politics.  Mr.  Gardner  adds  that 
Mr.  Hanna  at  first  objected  strongly  to  giving  as  much  time 
to  state  politics  as  the  position  demanded,  but  finally  allowed 
himself  to  be  persuaded.  He  served  with  success,  because 
his  standing  as  a  business  man  made  him  a  good  collector  of 
campaign  funds.  Thereafter  he  remained  in  more  or  less 
constant  association  with  the  state  committee. 

The  range  of  his  political  activity  increased,  however,  very 
slowly,  and  so  did  his  importance  as  a  local  political  leader. 
His  status  in  politics  was  merely  that  of  a  man  who  was  giv- 
ing most  of  his  time  to  business,  but  who  could  be  called  upon 
for  certain  services  to  his  party.  He  did  not  offer  himself 
for  public  office,  and  apparently  he  had  no  political  ambition  — 
except  his  usual  ambition  of  becoming  a  leader  among  the  men 
associated  with  him  in  any  undertaking.  This  period  of  his  in- 
terest in  politics  may  be  compared  to  the  part  of  his  business 


BEGINNINGS   IN   POLITICS  119 

career  which  antedated  his  entrance  into  the  firm  of  Rhodes 
&  Co.  It  was  the  experimental  period,  during  which  he  had 
not  come  to  realize  either  what  he  wanted  in  politics  or  what 
were  the  ways  and  means  of  attaining  success  in  this  less 
familiar  region. 

His  peculiar  success  in  business  had  been  due  largely  to  the 
formation  of  a  group  of  loyal  and  permanent  human  relation- 
ships. His  subsequent  success  in  politics  was  to  be  due  largely 
to  the  creation  of  similar  ties;  and  the  time  had  not  yet  come 
when  the  really  helpful  and  permanent  ties  could  be  formed.  In 
the  meanwhile  the  enmities  which  he  had  already  made  in  poli- 
tics were  perhaps  even  more  conspicuous  than  the  friendships. 
His  lack  of  diplomacy,  his  indifference  to  popularity  and  his 
plain-dealing  had  more  serious  results  in  politics  than  they  had 
in  business.  His  fights  with  the  petty  " bosses,"  and  his  aggres- 
sive methods  and  ways  had  raised  in  his  path  a  number  of 
aggrieved  men,  who,  like  Mr.  Cowles,  were  eager  to  oppose 
any  candidate  or  measure  which  he  advocated,  and  who  were 
already  describing  him  as  a  "boss"  unscrupulously  grasping 
after  money  and  power.  These  personal  enemies  in  his  own 
bailiwick  were  a  source  of  embarrassment  to  him  throughout  the 
whole  of  his  political  career.  His  political  enemies  were  more 
than  outweighed  by  his  political  friends,  but  the  political  friend- 
ships of  these  early  years  were,  with  one  or  two  exceptions,  not 
his  permanent  political  friends.  He  had  still  to  make  a  num- 
ber of  mistakes  and  failures  before  he  knew  what  he  could  do  in 
politics,  and  with  whom  he  wanted  to  cooperate. 


CHAPTER  XII 

TWO   CONVENTIONS   AND    THEIR  RESULTS 

THE  Republican  National  Convention  of  1884  was  the  occasion 
of  Mark  Hanna's  first  plunge  into  the  deeper  waters  of  national 
politics.  He  was  a  delegate  to  that  Convention,  and  the  way  in 
which  his  election  was  secured  reveals  the  effect  of  the  personal 
relations  which  he  had  already  formed  in  politics.  After  be- 
ing defeated  by  his  enemies  he  was  at  the  last  moment  saved 
by  his  friends.  If  he  had  not  been  saved  by  his  friends  and  had 
failed  to  attend  the  Convention  as  delegate,  his  whole  subse- 
quent political  career  might  have  been  different. 

In  the  spring  of  1884  Mr.  Hanna  offered  himself  to  the  Repub- 
licans of  Cleveland  as  a  candidate  for  delegate  to  the  National 
Convention.  There  were  two  delegates  to  be  elected,  and  there 
were  besides  himself  two  candidates  in  the  field.  One  of  them 
was  his  redoubtable  opponent,  Mr.  Edwin  Cowles  of  the  Leader, 
who  needed  no  other  motive  for  coveting  the  honor  than  a 
desire  to  prevent  Mr.  Hanna  from  winning  it.  The  other  was 
Mr.  A.  C.  Hord,  who  was  put  up  as  the  particular  candidate  of 
the  young  Republicans  of  Cleveland.  The  young  Republi- 
cans proved  the  quality  of  their  youth  by  triumphantly 
naming  Mr.  Hord  as  the  first  delegate  to  the  Convention. 
There  remained  a  second  seat  to  be  divided  between  the  two 
other  candidates.  The  contest  was  bitter,  because  the  rivalry 
between  the  two  newspapers,  as  well  as  lively  personal  feelings, 
were  involved.  But  the  Herald  and  its  owner  were  always 
being  beaten  by  the  Leader  and  its  owner.  Mr.  Cowles  was 
elected  by  a  considerable  majority. 

In  relation  to  this  contest,  Mr.  David  H.  Kimberley,  of  whom 
we  shall  hear  more  later,  tells  the  following  story.  Mr.  Kim- 
berley owned  a  flour  and  feed  store  on  the  West  Side  in  Cleve- 
land, but  he  was  more  of  a  politician  than  a  merchant.  For 
years  he  had  been  a  member  of  the  Republican  County  Com- 

120 


TWO    CONVENTIONS   AND   THEIR   RESULTS  121 

mittee,  and  he  had  such  a  wide  circle  of  political  acquaintance- 
ship that  he  was  a  useful  canvasser.  Early  in  the  spring  of  1884 
he  was  summoned  both  by  Mr.  Cowles  and  Mr.  Hanna,  each  of 
whom  wanted  his  help  in  getting  elected  delegate.  As  there  were 
two  delegates  as  well  as  two  candidates,  Mr.  Kimberley  saw  no 
reason  why  he  should  not  work  for  both  men.  He  started  out 
cheerfully  to  do  so.  Not  long  after  Mr.  Cowles  again  sent  for 
him,  and  asked  him  if  it  were  true  that  he  was  working  for  both 
candidates.  Mr.  Kimberley  replied  in  the  affirmative,  and  de- 
fended his  action  on  the  ground  that  inasmuch  as  two  dele- 
gates were  to  be  chosen,  the  interests  of  any  two  candidates 
were  not  mutually  exclusive.  Mr.  Cowles  did  not  agree  with 
him.  "  You  cannot  serve  two  masters,"  he  said ;  and  added,  "I 
understand  you  are  a  candidate  for  County  Treasurer."  Mr. 
Kimberley  replied  that  he  was.  "  Well !"  he  exclaimed,  and  his 
tone  and  manner  showed  Mr.  Kimberley  what  to  expect.  Mr. 
Kimberley  was  placed  in  a  difficult  position.  Both  of  the  can- 
didates controlled  Republican  newspapers,  and  he  could  not 
afford  to  incur  the  enmity  of  either.  He  went  to  Mr.  Hanna 
and  confided  his  troubles.  "Go  ahead  and  do  what  you  can 
for  Cowles,"  said  Mr.  Hanna,  "and  after  he  is  out  of  the  way  do 
the  best  you  can  for  me  !"  So  Mr.  Kimberley  returned  to  the 
Leader  office  and  assured  Mr.  Cowles  that  he  would  work 
for  him  and  him  alone  until  his  election  was  secure.  But  Mr. 
Cowles  was  still  suspicious  and  insisted  that  a  reporter  of  the 
Leader  be  sent  to  the  district  convention  from  Mr.  Kimber- 
ley's  ward  so  that  he  could  keep  an  eye  on  the  proceedings. 
In  Mr.  Kimberley's  opinion  Mr.  Hanna  was  too  generous  to 
force  him  to  take  sides  in  a  personal  quarrel  and  so  to  injure 
his  political  prospects. 

The  defeat  which  Mr.  Hanna  suffered  in  the  local  primaries 
was  only  the  prelude  to  a  greater  victory.  When  the  state 
Convention  met  in  Cleveland  his  friends  rallied  to  his  support ; 
and  his  services  to  the  state  organization  stood  him  in  good 
stead.  He  was  assured  that  if  he  would  be  a  candidate  for 
delegate-at-large,  he  would  obtain  sufficient  local  and  general 
support  to  secure  his  election.  Apparently  both  Sylvester  T. 
Everett,  then  a  man  of  some  political  importance,  and  George  W. 
Gardner  had  something  to  do  with  his  candidacy  and  with  his 


122      MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND  WORK 

subsequent  election.  But  he  did  not  obtain  the  office  without 
a  spirited  contest;  and  the  opposition  was  led  by  his  personal 
enemies  in  his  own  city.  Something  more,  however,  than  per- 
sonal motives  were  involved  in  the  contest.  Mark  Hanna  was 
known  to  favor  the  nomination  of  John  Sherman  as  Republican 
candidate  for  the  presidency.  The  Convention  and  the  Ohio 
Republicans  whom  it  represented  were  split  between  James  G. 
Elaine  and  Sherman,  so  that  it  sent  to  Chicago  a  divided  dele- 
gation. Mr.  Hanna  was  supported  by  the  delegates  from  Cin- 
cinnati and  others  favorable  to  Sherman.  The  delegates  favor- 
able to  Elaine  nearly  all  voted  against  him. 

In  the  Convention  of  1884  Mr.  Hanna  first  came  into  practical 
political  association  with  two  men  who  in  very  different  ways 
were  to  have  a  profound  effect  upon  his  subsequent  life.  Two 
of  the  delegates-at-large  from  Ohio  were  William  McKinley,  Jr., 
and  James  B.  Foraker  —  both  of  them  young  men  whose  careers 
were  very  much  in  the  ascendant.  McKinley  must  have  been 
already  known  to  Mr.  Hanna,  because  he  was  prominent  in  a 
part  of  the  state  adjacent  to  Cleveland,  in  which  Mr.  Hanna 
operated  coal  mines.  Foraker  hailed  from  Cincinnati  and 
may  not  have  been  known  to  Mr.  Hanna  except  by  reputation. 
Nevertheless,  when  the  Convention  was  over,  it  was  Foraker 
rather  than  McKinley  with  whom  Mr.  Hanna  had  entered  into 
more  intimate  relations. 

A  superficial  reason  for  the  intimacy  which  grew  up  between 
Mr.  Foraker  and  Mr.  Hanna  after  the  Convention  may  be 
traced  to  their  joint  support  of  John  Sherman's  candidacy  and 
McKinley's  support  of  Elaine.  But  in  all  probability  this 
difference  of  opinion  did  not  cause  any  alienation  between  Mr. 
Hanna  and  Mr.  McKinley.  Sherman  was  the  latter's  second 
choice ;  and  Sherman's  name  was  presented  to  the  Convention 
more  as  a  public  tribute  to  Ohio's  greatest  statesman  than  with 
any  expectation  of  success.  Sherman  was  much  more  seriously 
supported  and  made  a  much  better  showing  in  the  Conven- 
tions of  1880  and  of  1888  than  in  that  of  1884.  McKinley  was 
rather  for  Elaine  than  against  Sherman,  and  Foraker,  as  the 
event  proved,  was  really  about  as  much  for  Elaine  as  was  Mc- 
Kinley. 

The  delegation  from  Ohio  was  divided  almost  in  half.    Twenty- 


TWO   CONVENTIONS   AND   THEIR  RESULTS  123 

two  out  of  the  forty-six  delegates  voted  for  General  Powell 
Clayton,  the  Elaine  candidate  for  chairman.  On  the  first 
ballot  twenty-one  votes  from  Ohio  went  to  Mr.  Elaine  against 
twenty-five  for  her  "favorite  son."  Mr.  Sherman's  name  at- 
tracted only  five  additional  supporters  from  all  the  rest  of  the 
country.  Subsequently  he  did  even  worse.  The  division  in 
the  delegation  from  his  own  state  made  the  support  of  Sherman 
look  Platonic.  The  opponents  of  Mr.  Elaine  made  frantic 
efforts  to  concentrate  all  the  "dark  horse'7  and  "favorite  son" 
delegates  on  any  available  candidate,  including  Mr.  Sherman, 
but  all  to  no  effect.  Elaine  was  unquestionably  the  choice  of 
a  majority  of  the  Republican  voters  and  would  have  been 
nominated  on  the  first  ballot,  had  not  President  Arthur  been 
able  to  concentrate  all  the  Southern  delegates  on  himself. 
As  it  was,  the  supporters  of  most  of  the  "favorite  sons"  were 
merely  waiting  for  a  good  chance  to  board  the  Elaine  triumphal 
car. 

Certain  of  the  supporters  of  Mr.  Sherman  in  Ohio  were  as- 
suredly practising  in  their  own  minds  a  spectacular  yielding  to 
the  magnetism  of  Mr.  Elaine's  personality.  Mr.  Foraker  made 
the  speech,  placing  John  Sherman's  name  before  the  Convention  ; 
but  in  this  very  utterance  one  may  discern  verbal  vistas  look- 
ing toward  a  victorious  waving  plume.  After  the  third  ballot 
the  magnetic  attraction  proved  to  be  irresistible.  Mr.  Foraker 
made  a  sudden  but  apparently  premature  and  unsuccessful 
attempt  to  carry  the  Convention  by  acclamation  for  Elaine. 
The  nomination  nevertheless  went  to  Mr.  Elaine  on  the  fourth 
ballot  —  chiefly  because  Illinois  and  the  entire  delegation  from 
Ohio  rallied  to  his  name. 

Probably  the  result  was  not  much  more  of  a  disappointment 
to  Mr.  Hanna  than  it  was  to  Mr.  Foraker ;  but  he  was  none 
the  less  earnest  in  his  advocacy  of  John  Sherman's  nomination. 
It  represented  on  his  part  a  genuine  and  a  positive  choice.  He 
did  not  favor  Sherman  because  he  objected  seriously  to  the 
nomination  of  Elaine.  The  reasons  which  made  Mr.  Elaine 
so  obnoxious  to  the  independents  carried  little  weight  with  Mr. 
Hanna;  and  there  was  much  about  Mr.  Elaine's  personality 
and  career  which  might  well  have  had  a  strong  attraction  for  a 
man  of  his  wilful  and  adventurous  disposition.  On  the  other 


124      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

hand  Mr.  Sherman's  personality  was  distinctly  and  notori- 
ously deficient  in  warm  and  sympathetic  qualities.  If  Mr. 
Hanna  favored  and  continued  to  favor  John  Sherman  as  the 
Republican  nominee  for  the  presidency,  he  must  have  been 
and  was  acting  in  obedience  to  unusually  strong  instinctive 
preferences. 

Mark  Hanna  favored  John  Sherman's  nomination  because 
of  two  reasons  very  different  one  from  the  other,  but  closely 
associated  in  his  mind.  In  the  first  place  Mr.  Sherman  lived  in 
Ohio  and  at  this  time  Mr.  Hanna  was  not  likely  to  be  interested 
in  any  candidate  who  lived  anywhere  else.  His  anchorage 
in  politics  as  in  business  was  local  and  personal.  Distant  stars, 
like  Mr.  Elaine,  no  matter  how  luminous,  did  not  fascinate  him. 
He  could  not  bestow  his  allegiance  on  any  leader  with  whom 
he  was  not  by  way  of  being  personally  intimate ;  and  he  could 
not  support  such  a  leader  for  the  presidency  unless  the  latter's 
public  career  aroused  his  warm  approval.  For  the  presidency 
as  an  office  he  had  an  almost  superstitious  respect.  For  Mr. 
Sherman  as  a  statesman  he  had  an  unequivocal  admiration.  As 
a  business  man  he  understood  how  much  Mr.  Sherman  had  con- 
tributed towards  the  adoption  by  the  government  and  the  carry- 
ing out  of  a  sound  financial  policy,  and  how  valuable  the  ser- 
vice was.  No  man  in  the  country  was  better  equipped  for 
the  presidential  office  by  varied  and  prolonged  legislative  and 
administrative  experience,  and  no  man  was  better  entitled 
to  it  on  the  record  of  his  public  life.  That  Ohio  should  possess 
a  statesman  eminently  qualified  for  the  presidency  but  denied 
as  yet  the  opportunity  of  being  a  candidate  was  more  than  un- 
fortunate; it  was  unjust.  His  national  patriotism  and  his 
local  pride  were  both  aroused  by  the  project  of  placing  so  emi- 
nent a  man  in  so  high  an  office.  Thereafter  the  idea  fermented 
in  his  mind. 

In  Mr.  Hanna's  life  one  step  along  a  line  of  natural  self- 
expression  always  led  to  another.  His  attendance  at  the 
Convention  of  1884  sharpened  his  relish  for  politics  and  re- 
sulted directly  in  the  formation  of  new  personal  political 
ties.  He  entered  immediately  into  very  close  relations  with 
Mr.  James  B.  Foraker.  In  1884  Mr.  Foraker  was  considered 
to  be  the  ablest  and  most  promising  of  the  younger  Repub- 


TWO   CONVENTIONS   AND   THEIR   RESULTS  125 

licans  of  Ohio.  He  was  recognized  as  a  very  effective  stump 
speaker  and  as  an  ingenious  and  forcible  official  pleader  for  the 
nominees  and  policy  of  his  party.  He  had  no  superior  in  the 
art  of  pursuading  Republican  conventions  of  the  truth  of  Re- 
publican principles,  the  desirability  of  Republican  policies,  the 
impeccability  of  Republican  administrations,  and  of  the  ability 
and  patriotism  of  Republican  candidates.  He  had  been  nomi- 
nated for  the  governorship  in  1883  and  although  beaten  had 
made  a  favorable  impression  by  the  vigor  of  his  canvass.  His 
speech  nominating  John  Sherman  in  the  Convention  had  es- 
tablished his  reputation  as  a  party  orator,  while  at  the  same  time 
his  eagerness  to  be  converted  to  the  successful  candidate  had 
been  favorably  noticed  in  Augusta,  Maine.  He  paid  a  visit  to 
the  party  nominee  immediately  after  the  Convention  and  was 
conspicuous  on  the  stump  during  the  campaign. 

As  a  result  of  their  association  at  the  Convention,  Mr.  Hanna 
conceived  a  lively  admiration  and  warm  friendship  for  Mr. 
Foraker.  Writing  to  him  as  soon  as  the  Convention  was  over, 
Mr.  Hanna  said:  " Among  the  few  pleasures  I  found  at  the 
Convention  was  meeting  and  working  with  you.  I  hope  soon  to 
have  the  pleasure  of  renewing  the  acquaintance  under  more 
peaceful  and  comfortable  circumstances.  I  feel  that  the 
occasion  was  one  which  will  be  a  great  benefit  to  you  in  the  fu- 
ture, for  I  hear  nothing  but  praise  for  you  on  all  sides,  all  of 
which  I  heartily  endorse  and  will  hope  to  be  considered  among 
your  sincere  friends."  A  few  days  later  he  adds,  "I  assure 
you,  my  dear  fellow,  it  will  not  be  my  fault  if  our  acquaintance 
does  not  ripen,  for  I  shall  certainly  go  for  you  whenever  you  are 
within  reach." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  acquaintance  did  ripen  very  quickly. 
The  two  men  became  fast  personal  and  political  associates. 
Foraker  was  renominated  for  governor  in  the  summer  of 
1885  and  elected.  Mark  Hanna  served  on  the  executive 
campaign  committee  and  became  Mr.  Foraker's  most  effective 
ally  in  Cleveland  and  its  neighborhood.  He  made  a  good 
showing  on  election  day  both  for  the  local  and  the  state  ticket 
and  was  very  much  gratified  at  the  result.  Even  at  this  time 
he  was  prominent  enough  in  state  politics  to  have  his  own  name 
mentioned  for  the  gubernatorial  nomination,  but  he  was  not 


126      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

tempted  by  the  deceptive  glitter  of  any  such  prize.  He  was 
seeking  political  power  by  means  of  close  association  with  popu- 
lar leaders ;  and  for  the  time  being  Mr.  Foraker  was  the  man 
of  his  choice. 

Mr.  Hanna  evidently  expected  that  his  association  with  the 
new  Governor  would  strengthen  him  as  a  local  political  leader. 
In  all  probability  it  did,  but  if  so,  the  help  which  he  received 
from  this  source  was  due  rather  to  an  increase  of  prestige  than 
any  control  over  the  distribution  of  patronage.  He  was  con- 
sulted about  important  appointments,  but  his  advice  appears 
to  have  been  taken  more  in  relation  to  small  than  to  large  matters. 
His  disappointment,  however,  in  obtaining  from  the  Governor 
the  recognition  which  he  expected  did  not  affect  their  intimacy 
or  his  interest  in  Mr.  Foraker's  political  fortunes.  The  latter 
was  renominated  and  reflected  in  1887 ;  and,  if  one  may  judge 
from  the  tone  of  their  correspondence,  Mr.  Hanna  was  as  en- 
thusiastic a  supporter  of  Mr.  Foraker  in  1887  as  he  had  been 
in  1885.  During  the  second  campaign  he  assisted  Mr.  Foraker 
with  money  at  a  time  when,  to  judge  from  the  warmth  of  the 
latter's  thanks,  such  assistance  was  extremely  necessary. 

In  the  meantime  Mr.  Hanna  was  becoming  more  of  a  power  in 
local  politics.  In  March,  1885,  he  sold  out  the  Herald,  and 
this  judicious  piece  of  backsliding  served  at  once  to  allay  the 
enmity  of  Mr.  Cowles.  Thereafter  Mr.  Hanna  was  as  amiably 
treated  by  the  Leader  as  was  any  other  good  Republican,  and 
the  personal  attacks  on  him  were  transferred  to  the  Plain-Dealer. 
Mr.  George  W.  Gardner,  who  had  been  defeated  for  Mayor  in 
the  spring  of  1883,  was  elected  to  that  office  in  the  spring  of 
1885 ;  and  Mr.  Gardner  was  a  close  associate  of  Mr.  Hanna's 
in  politics.  In  the  fall  of  1885  Mr.  Hanna  took  a  lively  interest 
in  the  election  of  the  County  Treasurer.  The  Republican  can- 
didate for  that  office  was  the  Mr.  David  H.  Kimberley,  men- 
tioned above;  and  Mr.  Hanna  contributed  liberally  to  his 
campaign  expenses.  The  story  of  the  contribution  is  so  charac- 
teristic that  it  will  be  told  at  length  in  another  connection.  It 
was  openly  charged  in  the  Plain-Dealer  at  the  time  that  Mr. 
Kimberley  was  being  run  chiefly  in  the  interest  of  the  Union 
National  Bank.  Nevertheless  Mr.  Kimberley  was  elected  by 
an  unusually  large  majority.  When  he  was  renominated  two 


TWO    CONVENTIONS   AND   THEIR   RESULTS  127 

years  later  charges  of  favoritism  in  the  deposit  of  the  county 
funds  with  the  various  banks  were  again  made;  but  these 
charges  made  no  particular  mention  of  the  Union  National  Bank. 
They  were  denied  and  did  not  prevent  Mr.  Kimberley's  re- 
election. 

During  these  years  Mr.  Hanna  became  probably  as  influ- 
ential in  local  politics  as  any  other  one  man  in  Cleveland.  He 
was  accused  by  the  Plain-Dealer  of  being  the  local  Republi- 
can "boss";  but  the  accusation  was  merely  the  natural  par- 
tisan abuse  of  a  man  whose  aggressive  personality  gave  empha- 
sis to  his  actual  influence.  He  was  in  no  sense  of  the  word  a 
"boss,"  although  he  may  have  been  politically  the  most  in- 
fluential private  citizen  of  Cleveland.  Even  the  foregoing 
statement  of  his  standing  is  probably  an  exaggeration.  What- 
ever power  he  possessed  in  local  politics  was  due,  not  to  the 
building  up  of  a  personal  machine,  but  to  the  fact  that  behind 
him  were  the  more  important  business  men  of  Cleveland. 
Among  the  professional  politicians  he  had  a  few  friends  and 
many  enemies.  The  politicians  needed  him,  because  he  was 
personally  a  generous  contributor  and  an  unexcelled  collector 
of  funds;  but  they  never  recognized  him  as  their  leader. 

The  Republican  organization  in  Cleveland  was  always  unruly. 
The  success  of  the  party  in  local  campaigns  was  continually 
being  compromised  by  factional  fights,  revolts  against  regular 
nominations,  and  unexpected  ebullitions  of  popular  indepen- 
dence. In  the  spring  of  1887,  for  instance,  the  Republicans 
nominated,  apparently  under  Mr.  Raima's  influence,  William 
M.  Bayne  as  their  candidate  for  Mayor.  Mr.  Bayne  was  de- 
scribed to  be  a  very  honest  man,  but  one  who  made  his  living 
out  of  politics.  He  proved  to  be  a  weak  candidate  and  was 
decisively  defeated. 

Later  in  the  same  year  Mr.  Bayne  was  instrumental  in  alter- 
ing the  nominating  machinery  of  the  Cleveland  Republicans  in 
a  manner  which  would  now  be  considered  most  praiseworthy. 
As  a  means  of  stopping  the  abuse  of  packed  caucuses  a  system 
of  direct  primaries  was  proposed  and  accepted  by  the  Republican 
voters.  The  system  had  originated  in  Crawford  County, 
Pennsylvania,  and  was  named  after  its  place  of  origin.  Later 
many  attempts  were  made  to  abolish  the  plan,  but  they  were 


128      MAECUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

unsuccessful.  Mr.  Hanna  himself  came  eventually  to  oppose 
it;  but  when  it  was  first  introduced  he  probably  approved 
of  it.  Its  sponsor,  Mr.  Bayne,  was  so  closely  associated  with  him 
that  the  two  men  presumably  were  agreed  upon  the  desirability 
of  the  reform.  It  unquestionably  served  its  intended  purpose 
of  doing  away  with  packed  caucuses ;  but  it  made  the  Republi- 
can party  of  Cleveland  more  than  ever  unruly. 

Whatever  advantage  Mr.  Hanna  may  have  derived  from  his 
association  with  Mr.  Foraker  did  not  last  very  long,  because 
in  the  spring  of  1888,  soon  after  Mr.  Foraker 's  second  inaugura- 
tion, the  association  itself  was  broken.  Mr.  Foraker  states  that 
the  rupture  of  their  personal  and  political  friendship  was  brought 
about  by  a  disagreement  over  the  distribution  of  patronage; 
but  while  there  developed  a  disagreement  of  this  kind,  which 
both  divided  Mr.  Hanna  from  the  Governor  and  brought  him 
closer  to  Mr.  McKinley,  other  causes  contributed  substantially 
to  the  break.  Before  coming,  however,  to  these  other  and 
more  important  causes,  an  account  must  be  given  of  the 
incident  to  which  Mr.  Foraker  himself  attributes  the  dissolu- 
tion of  their  friendship. 

The  most  lucrative  office  within  the  gift  of  the  Governor  of 
Ohio  at  that  time  was  the  oil  inspectorship  —  an  official  who 
was  paid  by  the  fees  of  the  oil  refineries  whose  product  he  in- 
spected, and  who  had  the  appointment  of  deputies  to  do  the 
work  throughout  the  state.  When  Mr.  Foraker  was  first  elected 
both  Mr.  Hanna  and  Mr.  McKinley  had  a  candidate  for  the 
job,  the  former's  being  Mr.  W.  M.  Bayne  and  the  latter 's  a 
Captain  Smithnight.  Mr.  Hanna  was  for  a  while  more  energetic 
in  opposing  Mr.  McKinley's  candidate  than  he  was  in  urging 
the  claims  of  his  own ;  but  later  he  moderated  his  tone.  In 
November,  1885,  he  wrote  to  the  Governor-elect:  "I  had  a 
call  from  Major  McKinley  and  his  oil  inspector  candidate. 
The  Major  is  never  behind-hand  with  his  claims.  I  tell  him  he 
'wants  the  earth/  and  it  looks  as  if  I  were  getting  about  where 
I  generally  do  in  politics  — '  left '  with  no  asset  except  my 
reputation  of  being  a  good  fellow  and  always  accommodating. 
However,  I  told  McKinley  I  only  cared  for  you  in  this  matter." 
This  letter  was  a  prelude  to  the  appointment  of  Captain  Smith- 
night.  It  looks  as  if  Mr.  Hanna  had  withdrawn  his  claims, 


»  TWO    CONVENTIONS   AND   THEIR   RESULTS  129 

in  order  to  relieve  the  Governor  from  an  embarrassing  situ- 
ation. 

The  same  matter  came  up  after  Mr.  Foraker's  second  election. 
Mr.  McKinley  considered  himself  entitled  to  Smithnight's 
reappointment.  The  Governor,  who  had  been  dissatisfied 
with  his  first  appointee,  was  resolved  this  time  to  give  the  office 
to  his  own  part  of  the  state.  Mr.  Hanna  thought  the  patronage 
should  remain  in  Cleveland,  but  urged  the  claims  of  his  own 
candidate,  Bayne.  Finally  the  Governor  appointed  George 
Cox,  subsequently  the  Cincinnati  "boss,"  to  the  inspectorship, 
without  even  notifying  Mr.  Hanna  of  his  intention ;  and  when 
the  deputy-inspectorships  came  to  be  passed  around,  Bayne  was 
as  usual  pushed  aside  for  the  benefit  of  Smithnight.  Mr.  Hanna 
was  so  much  chagrined  that  he  ran  away  from  Cleveland,  and 
he  wrote  to  the  Governor  that  he  would  scarcely  dare  to  return, 
in  case  his  recommendation  was  ignored  in  the  matter  of  another 
deputyship.  The  whole  incident  must  have  been  a  blow  to  his 
local  political  prestige. 

There  is  no  evidence,  however,  that  this  incident  alone  would 
have  been  sufficient  to  sever  the  friendship  between  the  two  men. 
At  most,  it  indicated  that  Mr.  Forakerwas  looking  elsewhere 
for  the  support  which  the  satisfaction  of  his  political  ambition 
required.  After  the  incident  Mr.  Hanna  continued  to  write  to 
the  Governor  in  a  friendly,  almost  an  affectionate,  manner. 
The  final  break  did  not  take  place  until  after  the  Convention  of 
1888 ;  and  it  was  due  to  disagreements  which  occurred  during  the 
meeting  of  the  Convention.  While"  the  complete  story  of  this 
disagreement  cannot  be  told,  the  substance  of  it,  which  concerns 
Mr.  Foraker's  attitude  towards  the  campaign  on  behalf  of  John 
Sherman's  nomination,  is  well  known  and  not  at  all  obscure. 

Mark  Hanna's  conviction  that  John  Sherman  could  and 
should  be  nominated  and  elected  to  the  presidency  had  not  been 
shaken  by  the  poor  showing  made  by  his  candidate  in  the  Con- 
vention of  1884.  The  result  of  the  election  of  that  year  con- 
firmed his  belief  in  the  desirability  of  Mr.  Sherman's  nomination 
in  the  interest  of  party  success.  Immediately  after  the  defeat 
of  James  G.  Blaine  he  had  written  to  Mr.  Foraker :  "I  feel  sure 
now  in  looking  back  over  the  results  of  the  campaign  that 
John  Sherman  would  have  been  the  strongest  candidate ;  and  I 


130      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

believe  that  he  will  be  the  strongest  man  in  1888."  The  narrow 
margin  and  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  Mr.  Elaine's  defeat 
made  it  plausible  that,  if  Mr.  Sherman  had  been  the  candidate 
in  1884,  he  would  have  been  elected. 

Throughout  the  next  few  years  the  project  of  nominating  Mr. 
Sherman  grew  upon  Mr.  Hanna.  The  idea  appealed  to  him 
because  of  its  apparent  practicability,  because  of  its  peculiar 
desirability,  and  because  the  work  demanded  for  its  realization 
was  suited  to  his  opportunities  and  abilities.  At  that  time  he 
had  no  ambition  or  hope  of  personal  preferment.  He  was  a 
business  man  with  a  collateral  interest  in  politics.  As  a  busi- 
ness man  he  could  not  afford  the  time  for  a  slow  and  steady 
climb  up  the  political  ladder.  Nevertheless  he  wanted  to 
be  associated  with  large  political  events  and  achievements.  If 
he  was  going  to  interest  himself  in  electing  other  men  to  office, 
why  not  the  biggest  man  he  knew  and  the  highest  office  in  the 
land?  Such  a  job  would  be  more  interesting  than  electing 
mayors  or  governors;  and,  if  successful,  he  would  obtain  by 
virtue  of  the  personal  association  an  amount  of  prestige  and 
power  which  he  could  not  acquire  in  any  other  way. 

I  do  not  mean  by  the  foregoing  description  of  Mr.  Hanna's 
motives  that  his  work  on  behalf  of  Mr.  Sherman  was  merely 
selfish.  On  the  contrary,  his  motives  in  this  as  in  the  other 
large  projects  of  his  life  were  primarily  disinterested.  It  was 
his  disposition  to  do  things  for  other  people.  But  mixed  with 
his  disinterestedness  was  a  large  amount  of  ambition  —  a  keen 
desire  for  personal  prestige  and  power.  He  seems  at  this 
time  to  have  reached  a  fairly  definite  conclusion  that  the  ful- 
filment of  any  personal  political  ambition  must  be  dependent 
upon  the  contribution,  which  he  could  make  to  the  political 
success  of  men  like  Foraker  or  Sherman.  He  could  become  a 
national  political  luminary  only  by  attaching  himself  to  a  star 
of  the  first  magnitude  and  shining  by  reflected  light.  In  the 
spring  of  1888  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Foraker  and  urged  the  Governor 
to  persuade  Russell  A.  Alger  to  retire  in  favor  of  Sherman. 
Mr.  Alger's  general  position  in  politics  was  similar  to  his  own : 
"Can  you  not,"  he  said,  "persuade  Alger,  if  his  strength  is  not 
encouraging,  to  go  over  to  Sherman  on  the  second  ballot  ?  Better 
for  his  future  to  be  prominent  in  making  a  candidate  than  in 


TWO   CONVENTIONS   AND   THEIR   RESULTS  131 

leading  a  forlorn  hope.  Better  be  a  power  with  a  man  like 
Sherman  than  merely  a  prominent  citizen  of  Michigan."  He 
might  have  added  from  his  own  point  of  view  "or  of  Ohio." 

He  was  actively  working  on  Mr.  Sherman's  behalf  from  1885  to 
1888.  Soon  after  the  Convention  of  1884  Mr.  Sherman  told 
Mr.  Foraker  that  he  would  be  glad  to  make  Mr.  Hanna's 
acquaintance.  A  meeting  soon  followed.  Mr.  Hanna  was 
frequently  in  Washington,  and  he  used  these  and  other  oppor- 
tunities to  become  still  better  acquainted  with  Mr.  Sherman. 
In  1885,  probably  owing  to  the  latter's  influence,  Mr.  Hanna 
was  appointed  by  President  Cleveland  one  of  the  government 
directors  of  the  Union  Pacific  Railroad.1  By  1887  the  two  men 
had  become  intimate  enough  to  correspond  freely  and  to  ex- 
change visits  between  Cleveland  and  Mansfield.  The  basis 
of  this  intimacy  undoubtedly  was  Mr.  Hanna's  interest  in 
Sherman's  nomination.  As  the  meeting  of  the  Convention 
approached  he  gave  more  and  more  of  his  time  to  the  work,  and 
he  not  only  contributed  liberally  to  the  expenses  himself  but 
he  raised  money  among  his  business  associates.  Finally  he  was 
selected  by  the  candidate  as  the  manager  of  the  campaign  and 
as  Mr.  Sherman's  personal  representative  at  the  Convention; 
but  although  almost  all  of  Mr.  Sherman's  supporters  approved 
of  the  selection,  it  was  made  practically  by  Mr.  Hanna  himself. 
He  was  more  interested  in  Mr.  Sherman's  nomination  and  elec- 
tion than  was  any  man  in  the  country,  Mr.  Sherman  alone 
excepted ;  and  that  interest  had  earned  him  his  appointment. 
He  had  selected  himself  to  be  the  leader  of  the  Sherman  forces 
by  virtue  of  hard,  enthusiastic  and  competent  work. 

A  united  delegation  from  Ohio  was  practically  assured  from 
the  start.  The  President  being  a  Democrat,  there  was  no 
Republican  candidate  backed  by  the  administration ;  and  James 
G.  Blaine,  the  only  man  who  might  have  divided  the  allegiance 
of  Ohio,  was  not  allowing  the  use  of  his  name.  The  way  was 

1  This  appointment  was  an  incident  of  his  business,  rather  than  of 
his  political,  career  — although  it  was  of  course  a  recognition  of  political 
service.  His  duties  as  director  took  a  great  deal  of  his  time,  and  his 
knowledge  of  the  coal  business  resulted  in  his  being  placed  at  the  head 
of  a  committee,  which  took  special  charge  of  the  coal  interests  of  the  rail- 
road. Its  President,  Mr.  Charles  Francis  Adams,  wrote  with  the 
warmest  praise  of  his  services  in  this  matter  to  the  railroad. 


132      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

clear,  consequently,  f  or  " favorite  sons"  throughout  the  Republi- 
can states.  John  Sherman  was  the  " favorite  son"  of  Ohio,  and 
while  he  had  never  aroused  very  much  enthusiasm  in  the  part, 
he  had  been  cast  for  it  so  often  that  a  very  strong  man  would 
have  been  required  to  take  it  away  from  him.  Moreover,  the 
politicians  of  Ohio  had  good  reason  to  be  united  on  his  behalf, 
because  he  had  apparently  a  better  chance  for  the  nomination 
than  any  other  one  candidate. 

The  situation  in  Ohio  presented  only  one  doubtful  aspect. 
The  partisans  of  Mr.  Sherman,  and  apparently  Mr.  Sherman 
himself,  began  to  suspect  the  good  faith  of  Governor  Foraker. 
A  number  of  small  matters  had  served  to  breed  suspicion.  Mr. 
Foraker  had  privately  opposed  the  indorsement  of  Sherman's 
candidacy  by  the  State  Convention  of  1887,  which  renominated 
him  for  governor,  and  had  yielded  to  the  demand  only  on 
compulsion.  The  action  of  some  of  Mr.  Foraker's  friends  in 
the  district  conventions  in  the  spring  of  1888  had  aroused 
uneasiness  and  criticism,  and  stirred  Mr.  Hanna  to  remonstrate 
with  the  Governor.  If  we  may  judge,  however,  from  the  tone 
of  Mr.  Hanna's  letters  up  to  the  last  moment,  he  did  not  share 
in  the  suspicions  of  Mr.  Foraker's  good  faith. 

I  know  of  no  conclusive  evidence  to  justify  these  suspicions, 
and  for  a  long  time  their  effect  remained  subterranean.  The 
district  and  state  conventions  elected  a  united  Sherman  delega- 
tion, and  in  its  proceedings  there  were  no  symptoms  of  any 
lack  of  harmony.  William  McKinley,  Jr.,  Benjamin  Butter- 
worth,  James  B.  Foraker  and  Charles  Foster  were  named  dele- 
gates-at-large.  Mark  Hanna  was  sent  to  the  Convention  from 
Cleveland  together  with  Myron  T.  Herrick.  Mr.  Herri ck,  like 
Mr.  Hord  in  1884,  was  elected  by  the  young  Republicans,  and 
Mr.  Hanna  escaped  defeat  by  only  a  very  narrow  margin. 

During  the  month  of  May  the  friction  between  Senator 
Sherman  and  Governor  Foraker  increased.  It  was  openly 
hinted  in  the  newspapers  that  the  Governor  was  not  acting 
loyally,  and  that  consequently  he  would  not  be  allowed  to 
make  the  speech  placing  Mr.  Sherman's  name  in  nomination. 
The  latter's  friends  feared,  or  pretended  to  fear,  that  like  General 
Garfield  in  1880,  Mr.  Foraker  would  make  so  eloquent  a  speech 
nominating  Sherman  that  the  Convention  would  bestow  the 


TWO   CONVENTIONS   AND   THEIR   RESULTS          *  133 

honor  on  the  advocate.  The  hints  became  so  explicit  that  Mr. 
Foraker  gave  out  several  interviews  stating  that  he  was  not  a 
candidate  either  for  first  or  second  place  on  the  ticket;  but 
whether  a  candidate  or  not  he  was  thoroughly  disgruntled.  On 
May  10  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Hanna:  "I  do  not  like  the  outlook 
for  our  cause.  It  may  be  it  is  only  because  no  one  deems  it 
appropriate  to  give  me  any  information  about  it.  At  any  rate 
I  am  wholly  ignorant  as  to  Mr.  Sherman's  plans  and  wishes, 
hopes  and  prospects." 

Whether  or  not  Mr.  Foraker  was  seriously  considering  the 
possible  results  to  himself  of  the  nomination  of  another  candi- 
date, the  distrust  of  Senator  Sherman  was  at  least  explicable. 
At  that  time  the  Governor  was  at  the  height  of  his  popularity 
and  power.  He  had  been  twice  elected  Chief  Executive  of  his 
state.  His  ability  and  his  usefulness  to  the  party  were  generally 
recognized.  No  other  Ohio  Republican  had  apparently  as  much 
of  a  following  and  could  look  forward  to  a  probably  more 
brilliant  future.  He  had,  moreover,  a  number  of  extremely 
zealous  friends,  who,  unlike  Mr.  Hanna,  did  not  divide  their 
allegiance  between  Foraker  and  Sherman.  It  was  generally 
expected  that  an  attempt  would  be  made  to  stampede  the 
Convention  for  Elaine ;  and  if  such  an  attempt  were  successful 
Mr.  Foraker  looked  like  the  best  possible  choice  for  second 
place  on  the  ticket  —  particularly  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the 
Democrats  had  nominated  for  Vice-President  Allen  G.  Thurman 
of  Ohio. 

With  whatever  justification  the  friction  continued  to  increase, 
and  affected  the  relations  between  Governor  Foraker  and  Mr. 
Hanna.  They  were  still  friendly,  and  the  latter  continued  to 
write  in  a  cordial  and  confidential  way  to  the  Governor,  telling 
about  the  apparent  obstacles  to  Sherman's  nomination  and 
asking  for  his  assistance  in  removing  them.  But  Mr.  Foraker 
could  not  be  placated  by  Mr.  Hanna.  He  felt  that  he  was  being 
denied  the  influence  to  which  his  prominence  entitled  him.  He 
resented  the  choice  of  Mr.  Hanna  as  leader  of  the  Sherman 
forces  and  his  own  relegation  to  a  subordinate  position.  The 
impression  that  he  was  being  treated  with  scant  courtesy  was 
confirmed  by  the  rooms  assigned  to  him  at  the  hotel  in  Chicago. 
As  quartermaster  of  the  delegation,  Mr.  Hanna  had  engaged 


134      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

accommodations  at  the  Grand  Pacific.  The  rooms  selected  for 
the  Governor  were  on  the  floor  above  the  Ohio]  headquarters 
instead  of  adjoining  them;  whereupon  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Hanna 
and  protested  bitterly  and  indignantly.  Mr.  Hanna  explained 
at  length  the  reasons  for  the  assignment,  and  in  the  end  Mr. 
Foraker  accepted  the  arrangement  and  tacitly  acknowledged 
he  had  been  hasty.  Their  final  exchange  of  letters  before  the 
Convention  was  more  friendly,  but  manifestly  peace  had  not 
really  been  patched  up.  Mr.  Hanna  winds  up  his  last  letter  with 
the  following  sentence,  "Good-by,  until  we  meet  on  the  battle- 
field and  my  Ohio  comes  out  victorious." 

Mr.  Hanna  firmly  believed  in  the  probable  success  of  the 
Sherman  candidacy,  and  his  anticipations  were  far  from  unreason- 
able. Senator  Sherman  was  the  most  eminent  Republican  whose 
name  was  placed  formally  in  nomination.  The  candidates  offered 
by  other  states,  such  as  Depew  of  New  York,  Rusk  of  Wisconsin, 
Alger  of  Michigan,  Gresham  of  Illinois,  and  Harrison  of  Indiana, 
had  no  advantage  over  Sherman  in  availability,  and  their  titles 
to  the  nomination  were  wholly  inferior.  The  thundercloud 
of  a  Elaine  stampede  looked  ominous ;  but  if  that  danger  could 
be  escaped,  it  seemed  like  plain  sailing.  A  few  days  before 
the  meeting  of  the  Convention,  Mr.  Hanna  gave  to  the  news- 
papers the  following  numerical  estimate  of  Sherman's  probable 
strength.  "We  hope,"  he  said,  "to  have  three  hundred  dele- 
gates. Two  hundred  of  them  will  come  from  the  South  and  the 
remainder  from  the  West  and  East.  Massachusetts  and  Penn- 
sylvania are  with  us.  We  shall  probably  get  the  entire  delega- 
tion from  the  latter  state  on  the  third  or  fourth  ballot.  If  we 
get  Pennsylvania  and  our  other  friends  are  steadfast,  nothing 
can  prevent  Sherman's  nomination.  In  the  sober  thought  of 
the  delegates,  he  better  represents  the  wishes  of  the  Republican 
party  than  does  any  of  the  other  candidates."  The  phrase 
"sober  thought"  betrays  the  fact  that  the  supporters  of  Sher- 
man feared  more  than  anything  else  a  stampede  for  Elaine. 

When  the  Convention  assembled  the  outlook  for  Sherman 
continued  to  be  favorable.  The  voting  began  on  Friday,  June 
22,  and  on  the  first  ballot  Sherman  received  229  votes,  which 
was  twice  as  many  as  his  nearest  competitor.  On  the  second 
ballot  the  number  of  his  supporters  ran  up  to  249,  certain 


TWO   CONVENTIONS   AND   THEIR   RESULTS  135 

accessions  having  been  made  in  Pennsylvania.  But  his  strength 
never  equalled  Mr.  Raima's  estimate  of  300  votes.  Massachu- 
setts only  gave  him  9  out  of  a  total  of  28,  Pennsylvania  53  out  of 
60,  Ohio  46,  and  the  rest  came  from  the  South.  On  the  sub- 
sequent ballots  Mr.  Sherman's  strength  slowly  declined.  He 
continued  to  lead  his  competitors  until  and  including  the  sixth 
ballot,  but  in  the  meantime  Benjamin  Harrison  had  been 
gaining  steadily.  The  latter  was  nominated  on  the  eighth 
ballot,  and  in  selecting  him  the  Convention  had  nominated  the 
next  best  man  to  Mr.  Sherman. 

The  official  proceedings  of  the  Convention  were  tame  enough, 
but  behind  them  was  a  seething  caldron  of  negotiation  and 
intrigue.  It  exhibited  at  its  worst  the  regular  method  of 
nominating  presidential  candidates,  because,  in  the  absence 
of  a  strong  popular  preference  for  any  one  man,  free  opportunity 
was  provided  for  the  use  of  dubious  methods  and  the  action  of 
equivocal  motives.  During  the  first  two  days  the  most  active 
subterranean  intrigue  was  being  carried  on  in  favor  of  Blaine ; 
but  Mr.  Blaine  never  gave  it  open  and  authoritative  countenance. 
While  a  considerable  part  of  the  Convention  was  ready  to  be 
stampeded,  the  sentiment  in  Mr.  Elaine's  favor  was  not  general 
enough  to  afford  sufficient  body  to  the  project.  Until  Sunday, 
however,  the  hopes  of  the  supporters  of  Mr.  Blaine  ran  high.  On 
Sunday  they  vanished,  and  the  delegates  who  had  been  waiting 
for  a  possible  Blaine  stampede  began  really  to  consider  whom 
they  could  gain  most  by  nominating. 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  Sherman  had  been  losing  since  the 
second  ballot,  he  is  said  still  to  have  had  a  fair  chance  on  Sunday. 
New  York  was  hesitating  between  Harrison  and  Sherman, 
and  it  would  not  have  taken  much  to  make  the  tide  set  towards 
Ohio.  More  remarkable  was  the  sudden  and  unexpected 
strength  developed  by  William  McKinley.  In  spite  of  the 
fact  that  he  was  not  a  candidate,  a  few  delegates  persisted 
in  voting  for  him,  and  for  a  while  on  Sunday  his  candidacy 
developed  a  subterranean  strength  which  was  never  represented 
in  the  ballot.  McKinley  was,  indeed,  assured  by  the  delegates 
of  several  states  that  Ohio  might  get  the  nomination  in  his 
person  —  provided  Sherman  would  withdraw.  These  repre- 
sentations were  telegraphed  to  Sherman,  but  he  refused  to 


136      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS    LIFE    AND   WORK 

release  any  of  his  supporters.  Mr.  McKinley  had  protested 
on  Saturday  during  the  session  of  the  Convention  against  the 
unauthorized  use  of  his  name.  His  scrupulous  loyalty  to  Senator 
Sherman  was  a  matter  of  very  favorable  comment  in  Republican 
newspapers  after  the  close  of  the  Convention. 

Senator  Theodore  E.  Burton  in  his  "  Life  of  John  Sherman"  in 
the  series  of  " American  Statesmen"  makes  the  following 
comment  on  the  defeat  of  Mr.  Sherman:  "At  this  Convention 
(1888)  the  delegation  from  Ohio  was  for  the  first  time  unanimous 
for  him.  There  were,  however,  rumors  of  lack  of  cordiality 
on  the  part  of  some  leading  members  of  the  delegation,  which 
did  much  to  diminish  support  from  other  states."  One  of  the 
delegates  involved  by  these  rumors  was  Governor  Foraker.  He 
was  openly  accused  of  treachery  by  the  supporters  of  Sherman. 
He  vehemently  and  indignantly  denied  the  accusation,  but  he 
never  convinced  his  colleagues,  and  his  behavior  had  certain 
dubious  aspects.  On  Sunday  an  interview  with  him  appeared 
in  the  newspapers,  stating  that  Sherman  was  no  longer  a  possi- 
bility, and  that  on  Monday  he  would  vote  for  Elaine.  This 
interview  he  subsequently  repudiated,  but  if  he  had  not  given  it 
out,  why  should  it  be  fabricated?  It  is  significant  also  that 
members  of  the  Columbus  Club  had  paraded  the  streets  of 
Chicago  waving  aloft  portraits  of  the  Governor  and  wearing  his 
badges  on  their  coat.  It  is  stated  that  the  name  of  Elaine 
could  be  read  on  the  other  side  of  these  badges. 

These  circumstances  are  mentioned,  not  because  they  afford 
conclusive  proof  that  Mr.  Foraker  was  playing  a  double  game, 
but  merely  to  explain  the  conviction  of  his  colleagues  that  he 
was  not  loyal  to  John  Sherman.  In  his  statement  Mr.  Foraker 
admits  the  existence  of  bad  feeling  in  the  delegation,  but  attrib- 
utes it  to  another  cause.  He  says:  "A  great  many  colored 
delegates  from  the  South,  as  is  their  custom,  had  tickets  to  the 
Convention  which  they  desired  to  sell.  They  brought  their 
tickets  to  our  rooms  at  the  hotel,  and  Mr.  Hanna,  in  the  presence 
of  us  all,  bought  them.  I  protested  against  such  methods,  saying 
that  it  would  bring  scandal  on  the  entire  delegation  and  hurt 
Sherman's  cause.  Mr.  Hanna  and  I  had  a  spirited  discussion 
over  the  matter,  and  it  resulted  in  my  leaving  the  rooms  and 
seeking  apartments  on  another  floor."  There  is  some  truth 


TWO   CONVENTIONS   AND  THEIR  RESULTS  137 

in  the  foregoing  statement.  Other  members  of  the  Convention 
state  that  Mr.  Hanna  had  in  his  trunk  more  tickets  to  the 
Convention  than  he  could  have  obtained  in  any  way  save  by 
their  purchase  from  negro  delegates.  Such  practices  were 
common  at  the  time ;  but  they  were  indefensible,  and  if  they 
evoked  a  protest  from  Mr.  Foraker,  he  deserves  credit  for  the 
protest.  The  split  in  the  delegation  must,  however,  be  traced  to 
a  wholly  different  cause. 

Rightly  or  wrongly,  not  only  Mr.  Hanna,  but  the  other  leading 
members  of  the  delegation  believed  that  Mr.  Foraker  was 
secretly  hostile  to  Senator  Sherman's  nomination,  and  that  this 
hostility  ruined  Mr.  Sherman's  chance  of  success.  The  inti- 
mate association  between  the  two  men  ended  in  June,  1888. 
After  the  Convention  they  exchanged  a  few  acrimonious  letters 
in  respect  to  the  distribution  and  settlement  of  the  expenses 
incurred  at  Chicago.  Their  correspondence  ceased.  It  was  not 
renewed  for  many  years,  and  then  only  on  rare  occasions  and 
for  purposes  in  which,  as  the  two  Senators  from  Ohio,  they  had 
a  joint  official  interest. 

The  story  of  Mark  Hanna's  friendship  with  Mr.  Foraker  and 
its  rupture  has  been  told  at  some  length,  because  the  incident 
did  much  to  determine  the  course  of  Mr.  Hanna's  subsequent 
political  career.  In  case  he  had  remained  intimately  associated 
with  Mr.  Foraker,  he  might  never  have  become  so  intimately 
associated  with  Mr.  McKinley.  Mr.  Foraker  himself  ventures 
the  opinion  that  their  break  resulted  indirectly  in  the  nomina- 
tion of  McKinley.  However  that  may  be,  the  continuation  of 
his  intimacy  with  Mr.  Foraker  would  probably  have  prevented 
him  from  attaching  himself  thereafter  so  ardently  and  so 
exclusively  to  Mr.  McKinley's  political  advancement.  The 
rupture  of  his  first  political  friendship  did  more,  however, 
than  clear  the  path  for  the  formation  of  the  second.  His  more 
intimate  association  with  Mr.  McKinley  was  in  a  measure  the 
immediate  result  of  his  break  with  Mr.  Foraker. 

The  behavior  of  Mr.  McKinley  at  the  Convention  made  a 
deep  impression  on  Mr.  Hanna.  The  essential  fabric  of  his 
own  life  consisted  of  personal  relationships.  He  instinctively 
placed  a  higher  value  on  loyalty  than  on  any  other  moral 
quality.  He  could  overlook  almost  any  human  failing,  except 


138      MARCUS    ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

disloyalty.  Erroneously  or  not,  he  considered  that  Mr.  Foraker 
had  been  secretly  hostile  to  the  candidacy  of  Senator  Sherman. 
He  knew  that  Mr.  McKinley  had  been  scrupulously  faithful 
under  a  peculiarly  severe  and  unexpected  personal  temptation. 
In  subsequent  conversations  about  McKinley,  he  often  referred 
with  the  utmost  admiration  to  Mr.  McKinley's  refusal  to  con- 
sider the  possible  purchase  of  the  highest  American  political 
honor  by  the  desertion  of  the  candidate  to  whom  he  was 
pledged  —  even  when  that  candidate  had  lost  all  chance  of 
success.  Thus  the  new  political  friendship  was  in  a  sense 
founded  on  the  ruins  of  the  old. 

The  rupture  with  Mr.  Foraker  resulted,  not  merely  in  the 
creation  of  new  friendships,  but  also  in  the  creation  of  new  en- 
mities. He  and  the  Governor,  in  ceasing  to  be  friends,  became 
active  opponents.  Thereafter  the  Republican  party  of  Ohio  was, 
until  Mr.  Hanna's  death,  divided  into  two  factions.  On  Mr. 
Hanna's  side  were  ranged  the  whole  group  of  Republicans  who 
had  been  interested  in  Senator  Sherman's  nomination.  It 
contained  Mr.  Sherman  himself,  Mr.  McKinley,  Benjamin 
Butterworth,  Charles  Foster  and  Mark  Hanna.  On  the  other 
side,  Mr.  Foraker  was  the  only  Republican  of  ability  and  prom- 
inence. He  was  a  proud,  self-contained  and  self-confident  man, 
whose  nature  it  was  to  play  a  lone  hand.  He  himself  states 
that  he  never  afterwards  had  a  political  ally,  with  whom  he  was 
as  closely  associated  as  he  had  been  for  a  while  with  Mr.  Hanna. 
It  speaks  well  for  his  skill  in  political  management  that  he  should 
have  been  able  to  hold  his  own  against  such  a  combination  of 
popularity,  effective  power  and  political  ability  as  Mr.  Mc- 
Kinley and  Mr.  Hanna  eventually  constituted. 

There  resulted  one  of  the  most  extraordinary  factional  fights 
offered  by  the  history  of  American  politics.  Its  existence  was 
notorious.  There  was  great  bitterness  of  feeling.  The  two 
factions  frequently  came  to  open  blows  in  the  primaries,  in  the 
state  conventions  and  in  the  legislature.  Yet  it  was  rarely,  if 
ever,  carried  so  far  as  to  imperil  party  success.  From  1888  until 
1904  the  Republicans  of  Ohio  were  victorious  with  one  exception, 
in  all  the  state  and  national  elections.  In  spite  of  charges  and 
countercharges  of  treachery  on  election  day,  the  two  factions 
kept  their  fight  on  the  whole  within  the  party  and  presented 


TWO   CONVENTIONS  AND   THEIR  RESULTS  139 

a  sufficiently  united  front  to  the  Democrats.  Neither  of  them 
felt  strong  enough  to  push  the  disagreement  to  a  finish  and  by 
risking  a  Democratic  victory  to  endanger  their  own  political 
plans  as  well  as  those  of  their  adversaries.  They  subordinated 
their  personal  quarrels  for  the  most  part  to  Republican  success. 
They  spoke  during  the  campaign  from  the  same  platforms, 
and  they  divided  the  offices.  Nevertheless  at  almost  every 
critical  moment  of  Mr.  Hanna's  subsequent  career  he  was  em- 
barrassed and  at  times  almost  defeated  by  the  personal  ill 
feelings  consequent  on  his  rupture  with  James  B.  Foraker. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

POLITICAL   FRIENDS   AND   ENEMIES 

THE  defeat  in  the  Convention  of  1888  of  the  presidential 
candidacy  of  John  Sherman  was  a  severe  disappointment  to  Mark 
Hanna  and  a  source  of  the  utmost  personal  exasperation.  He 
had  labored  long  and  well  for  a  worthy  and  practicable  political 
object  —  only  to  fail  at  the  last  moment  from  an  apparently 
unnecessary  cause.  The  experience  made  a  deep  impression 
upon  him.  It  constituted,  as  we  have  seen,  the  foundation  of 
life-long  political  friendships  and  enmities.  Thereafter  his 
career  in  politics  assumed,  not  a  new  direction,  but  a  new 
emphasis,  which  proved  to  be  salutary  and  edifying. 

The  idea  of  nominating  and  electing  William  McKinley  to 
the  presidency  of  the  United  States  was  born  of  those  exasperat- 
ing days  at  the  Chicago  Convention.  There  is  no  documentary 
proof  of  the  truth  of  this  statement,  but  his  intimate  friends 
date  from  this  moment  the  conception  of  the  idea,  and  the 
supposition  is  confirmed  by  a  sufficient  array  of  circumstantial 
corroboration.  The  circumstances  and  results  of  John  Sher- 
man's defeat  both  cleared  the  path  for  an  exclusive  devotion 
to  the  political  advancement  of  William  McKinley  and  made 
such  an  expenditure  of  his  time  and  energy  look  eminently 
practicable. 

Mark  Hanna  had  made  up  his  mind  to  nominate,  if  possible, 
a  political  leader  from  Ohio  as  the  Republican  candidate  for 
the  presidency.  He  was  a  man  distinguished  by  great  tenacity 
of  purpose.  The  defeat  of  Sherman  did  not  make  him  abandon 
the  idea ;  but  it  taught  him  that  John  Sherman  could  never  be 
the  vehicle  of  its  fulfilment.  Thereafter  that  statesman  had 
joined  in  Mr.  Hanna's  mind  the  majority  of  his  fellow-country- 
men in  becoming  a  presidential  impossibility.  But  the  same 
series  of  exciting  incidents  which  had  extinguished  the  fires  of 
Mr.  Sherman's  candidacy  had  unexpectedly  made  McKinley 
an  obvious  presidential  possibility.  A  great  name,  a  long  and 

140 


POLITICAL  FRIENDS   AND   ENEMIES  141 

eminent  career  and  a  lot  of  hard  work  had  not  availed  to  place 
Sherman  much  nearer  the  nomination  than  McKinley  had  been 
with  no  work  at  all  and  a  comparatively  modest  career  and 
reputation.  The  contrast  and  the  lesson  were  obvious.  They 
became  a  matter  of  frequent  contemporary  comment  in  the 
newspapers,  and  Mark  Hanna  had  more  reason  than  any  one 
else  to  have  them  stamped  on  his  mind. 

Just  at  the  moment  when  Sherman's  star  was  paling  and 
McKinley's  waxed  brighter,  Mr.  Hanna  had  broken  the  only 
personal  tie  in  politics  which  might  have  interfered  with 
an  interest  in  McKinley's  career.  James  B.  Foraker  was 
transformed  from  a  friend  into  an  opponent  under  conditions 
which,  erroneously  or  not,  persuaded  Mr.  Hanna  to  place  a 
higher  value  on  McKinley's  friendship  than  on  Mr.  Foraker's. 
McKinley  took  the  place  both  of  Sherman  and  Foraker  in  the 
hierarchy  of  Mr.  Hanna's  political  and  personal  relationships. 
He  became  both  the  intimate  friend  with  a  political  future  of 
great  promise  and  the  available  presidential  candidate.  There- 
after the  determination  to  make  Mr.  McKinley  President  of 
the  United  States  and  in  the  meantime  to  promote  his  political 
advancement  in  every  possible  way  became  Mark  Hanna's 
dominant  interest  in  politics. 

The  friendship  between  the  two  men  had  grown  slowly  and 
naturally.  Whatever  the  occasion  of  their  first  meeting,  they 
had  become  intimate  very  gradually.  During  the  years  of  Mr. 
Hanna's  association  with  Mr.  Foraker,  he  and  Mr.  McKinley, 
although  coming  from  the  same  part  of  the  state,  had  a  different 
set  of  political  associates  and  different  candidates  for  important 
state  offices.  I  have  quoted  a  letter  of  Mr.  Hanna's  to  the 
Governor,  in  which  he  complains  of  what  he  considers  the 
exorbitance  of  the  " Major's"  demands  for  recognition.  But 
Mr.  Hanna's  increasing  activity  in  politics  brought  them  into 
more  and  more  frequent  relations,  and  it  may  be  that  before 
the  Convention  the  process  of  substituting  McKinley  for  Foraker 
as  the  most  valued  of  Mr.  Hanna's  political  friends  had  already 
made  headway.  The  Governor  and  the  Congressman  were  in 
some  measure  political  rivals,  because  they  were  the  two  rising 
Republican  leaders  of  Ohio  whose  careers  might  conflict ;  and 
in  any  event  a  strong  interest  in  the  political  career  of  one  of 


142      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

them  would  have  interfered  with  any  but  a  subordinate  interest 
in  the  career  of  the  other.  The  close  political  and  personal 
association  which  began  after  the  convention  of  1888  between  Mr. 
Hanna  and  Mr.  McKinley  blossomed  suddenly,  but  its  roots 
had  been  slowly  growing  for  a  period  of  over  ten  years. 

The  startling  and  unforced  growth  of  McKinley's  presi- 
dential candidacy  in  the  Convention  of  1888  was  due  probably 
to  his  prominence  as  an  advocate  of  high  protection.  His 
amiable  disposition  and  his  winning  demeanor  undoubtedly 
contributed  to  his  popularity,  and  the  fact  that  he  hailed  from  a 
centrally  situated  state  like  Ohio  contributed  to  his  avail- 
ability. But  the  chief  reason  why  a  certain  number  of  Re- 
publicans turned  almost  instinctively  towards  him  was  due 
to  his  association  with  the  policy  of  protecting  American 
manufacturers  to  the  limit.  President  Cleveland's  message  in 
December,  1886,  and  his  renomination  had  made  it  certain 
that  the  campaign  of  1888  would  be  fought  and  decided  on 
the  tariff  issue.  The  Republicans  were  glad  to  accept  the 
challenge  and  turned  naturally  towards  the  man  who  was 
considered  to  be  the  ablest  advocate  of  the  party's  policy. 

Major  McKinley  had  been  a  Representative  in  Congress  from 
the  Mahoning  Valley  district  since  1877,  one  term  only  excepted. 
He  had  gradually  secured  the  confidence  of  his  party  associates 
by  his  tact,  his  attractive  personality,  his  industry  and  his 
ability  as  a  speaker.  His  congressional  reputation  had  been 
associated  almost  from  the  start  with  an  advocacy  of  high  pro- 
tection. When  Garfield  retired  from  the  Ways  and  Means  Com- 
mittee, before  his  nomination  to  the  presidency,  McKinley 
became  the  member  of  that  body  from  Ohio.  He  had  a  good 
deal  to  do  with  framing  the  tariff  act  of  1883,  and  increased  his 
reputation  during  the  debates  on  that  measure.  In  the  Re- 
publican Convention  of  1884  he  was  chairman  of  the  Committee 
on  Resolutions  and  was  associated  with  the  writing  of  the  party 
platform.  During  the  succeeding  years  he  added  to  his  fame 
by  his  able  opposition  to  the  several  proposals  introduced  by 
Democrats,  looking  towards  tariff  revision.  He  became  in  fact 
the  leading  Republican  protectionist  debater,  and  when  the 
Republican  Convention  assembled  in  1888  with  a  fight  on  the 
tariff  ahead,  McKinley  had  become  the  inevitable  man  for 


POLITICAL   FRIENDS   AND   ENEMIES  143 

the  chairmanship  of  the  Committee  on  Resolutions.  The 
definite  establishment  of  the  tariff  issue  as  the  dividing  line 
between  the  two  parties  was  bound  to  increase  the  political 
prestige  of  the  man  who  had  earned  recognition  as  the  most 
conspicuous  exponent  of  the  high  protectionist  idea.  If  Mr. 
Hanna  had  not  possessed  a  hundred  other  reasons  for  a  peculiar 
interest  in  McKinley,  the  latter's  association  with  protectionism 
might  in  itself  have  been  sufficient  to  create  it. 

A  coalescence  can  be  plainly  traced  at  this  point  between  Mark 
Hanna's  dominant  personal  political  interest  and  his  dominant 
impersonal  political  interest.  He  had  always  represented  in 
politics  the  point  of  view  of  a  business  man ;  and  now  for  the 
first  time  a  national  campaign  was  about  to  be  waged  on  an 
issue  involving  in  his  opinion  the  business  prosperity  of  the 
country.  The  appearance  of  such  an  issue  was  a  challenge  to 
him  to  become  more  than  ever  interested  in  active  political 
work  —  particularly  in  view  of  the  fact  that  every  victory  of 
protection  was  a  contribution  towards  the  possible  victorious 
candidacy  of  his  personal  friend,  Major  McKinley. 

Previous  to  the  campaign  of  1888  the  issue  between  the 
parties  had  never  been  definitely  made  on  the  tariff.  The 
Democrats  had  shown  a  strong  leaning  towards  tariff  reform, 
but  there  had  always  been  a  minority  of  protectionist  Democrats. 
The  great  majority  of  Republicans  had  been  extreme  protec- 
tionists, but  until  the  secession  of  the  independents  in  1884, 
there  had  always  been  a  minority  of  tariff  reform  Republicans. 
President  Cleveland's  message  in  1886  had  established  the 
issue ;  and  his  plea  for  revision  was  based  upon  arguments  which 
could  not  be  ignored.  Quite  apart  from  any  economic  theory 
for  or  against  protection,  the  existing  tariff  was  piling  up  a  sur- 
plus in  the  Treasury  which  for  various  reasons  could  no  longer 
be  used,  as  in  the  past,  to  reduce  the  national  debt.  Its  accumu- 
lation was  an  embarrassment  to  the  money  market  and  an 
unnecessary  drain  on  the  economic  resources  of  the  country. 
Some  revision  of  the  tariff  was  necessary,  and  a  revision  in  the 
direction  of  lower  duties  looked  like  the  only  possible  way  of 
getting  rid  of  the  surplus.  The  Democrats,  however,  advo- 
cated lower  duties,  not  merely  to  reduce  the  income  of  the 
government,  but  because  they  proposed  to  destroy  protectionism 


144      MARCUS  ALONZO    HANNA,   HIS    LIFE  AND   WORK 

as  the  American  fiscal  policy.  While  none  of  the  measures  of 
revision  introduced  by  them  were  framed  on  the  basis  of  a 
tariff  for  revenue  only,  their  arguments  were  based  upon  the 
intrinsic  desirability  of  free  trade  and  the  iniquity  of  protection- 
ism. 

Business  men  in  any  way  associated  with  protected  manufac- 
turing industries  rallied  with  enthusiasm  and  determination 
to  the  fiscal  policy  of  the  Republican  party.  Among  them 
Mark  Hanna  was  not  the  least  enthusiastic  and  determined. 
He  had  never  known  any  but  a  protectionist  fiscal  system.  He 
accepted  it  as  the  foundation,  not  merely  of  American  industrial 
expansion,  but  of  industrial  safety.  Depending  as  he  always 
did  upon  his  personal  experience  as  his  guide,  he  identified  pro- 
tectionism with  the  traditional  American  fiscal  system  —  the 
system  which  sought  to  give  the  American  producer  exclusive 
control  of  the  home  market,  and  which  practically  allowed  the 
beneficiaries  of  the  tariff  to  draw  up  the  schedules.  The  serious 
attack  made  upon  the  system  seemed  to  give  him  as  a  represen- 
tative in  politics  of  the  business  interest  a  new  duty  to  perform. 
Certain  conditions  which  he  considered  essential  to  business 
prosperity  were  being  threatened  by  political  agitation.  He 
and  other  business  men  must  rally  to  their  defence. 

Thus  the  campaign  of  1888  first  brought  clearly  to  light  an 
underlying  tendency  in  American  political  and  industrial  de- 
velopment which  until  then  had  remained  somewhat  obscure. 
Since  the  Civil  War  the  national  economic  system  had  been 
becoming  relatively  more  industrial  ^and  relatively  less  agri- 
cultural. The  increasing  proportion  of  the  population  depend- 
ent on  industry  lived,  not  merely  in  New  England  and  in  the 
Middle  States,  but  throughout  the  Middle  West.  The  rapid 
growth  of  industry  had  been  partly  dependent  upon  legislative 
encouragement.  It  had  given  to  the  people  interested  in  the 
protected  industries  a  reason  for  demanding  helpful  legislation 
and  a  reason  for  fearing  adverse  legislation.  This  encourage- 
ment, moreover,  had  not  taken  the  form  merely  of  protecting 
manufacturers  against  foreign  competition.  The  large  business 
interests  of  the  country  had  been  encouraged,  also,  by  the  ut- 
most laxity  in  the  granting  of  corporate  privileges  and  the  ut- 
most freedom  from  state  and  national  administrative  regulation. 


POLITICAL   FEIENDS   AND   ENEMIES  145 

There  had  been  a  general  disposition  to  grant  to  the  business 
interests  what  they  wanted,  because  American  public  opinion 
was  substantially  agreed  upon  the  desirability  in  the  public 
benefit  of  the  utmost  possible  stimulation  of  business  activity. 
The  result  had  been  to  make  business  vulnerable  at  a  hun- 
dred different  points  to  dangerous  political  attacks,  and  thus 
to  make  business  prosperity  immediately  dependent  upon  po- 
litical conditions. 

The  first  serious  attack  upon  the  traditional  system  made  by 
a  national  party  was  President  Cleveland's  antiprotectionist 
campaign.  The  protected  industries  defended  themselves  with 
their  natural  weapons.  They  subscribed  more  liberally  than 
ever  before  to  the  Republican  electoral  expenses.  In  1888 
more  money  was  raised  than  in  any  previous  national  campaign, 
and  it  was  raised  more  largely  from  business  men.  Its  abil- 
ity to  obtain  increased  supplies  from  such  sources  was  a  God- 
send to  the  machine,  because  the  spread  of  the  movement  tow- 
ards Civil  Service  Reform  had  diminished  its  collection  from 
office-holders,  while  at  the  same  time  the  constant  increase  of 
political  professionalism  was  making  electoral  campaigns  more 
than  ever  expensive.  Large  expenditures  for  political  purposes 
thereafter  became  the  rule;  and  the  needs  of  professional  poli- 
ticians, like  other  parasites,  soon  increased  up  to  the  level  of 
their  means  of  subsistence. 

Mark  Hanna,  as  a  representative  in  politics  of  the  business 
interest,  was  necessarily  connected  with  this  increased  raising 
and  expenditure  of  money  for  political  objects.  The  one  way 
at  that  time  in  which  he  could  fight  the  political  battles  of  the 
business  interests  was  to  provide  the  men  on  the  firing-line 
with  ammunition  and  food;  and  that  way  he  took.  He  be- 
came one  of  an  auxiliary  committee  to  the  Republican  National 
Committee  whose  specific  duty  it  was  to  solicit  campaign 
contributions. 

Mr.  Hanna  was  entitled  to  ask  other  Republicans  for  con- 
tributions because  he  himself  set  them  a  good  example.  He 
himself  had  always  been  a  liberal  contributor  to  the  funds  of 
his  party.  His  own  experience  had  taught  him  how  far  the  suc- 
cessful conduct  of  a  campaign  under  American  political  condi- 
tions depends  upon  a  free  expenditure  of  money.  He  knew  that 


146      MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

the  expenses  of  speakers  had  to  be  paid,  halls  rented,  literature 
distributed,  impecunious  candidates  helped,  the  registration 
and  the  vote  pulled]  out  and  the  polls  watched.  He  knew  that 
much  of  this  work  had  to  be  done  by  men  who  were  accustomed 
to  be  rewarded,  and  that  they  could  not  all  be  rewarded  at  the 
public  expense  with  offices.  Some  of  them  had  to  be  employed. 
He  knew  that  the  campaign  committees  were  always  short  of 
funds,  and  he  knew  that  he  could  not  show  a  more  effective 
practical  interest  in  politics  than  by  helping  to  pay  expenses. 
Whenever  he  did  anything,  he  did  it  thoroughly.  Probably 
no  man  in  the  country  contributed  more  liberally,  considering 
his  means,  to  the  war-chest  of  his  party  than  did  Mr.  Hanna. 

A  political  associate  describes  him  as  a  "  cheerful  giver." 
This  gentleman,  who  was  a  member  of  the  Republican  commit- 
tee of  Cuyahoga  County  for  twenty-five  years,  states  that  Mr. 
Hanna  was  the  only  Republican  in  the  city  of  Cleveland  who 
would  voluntarily  draw  his  check  for  campaign  purposes. 
Many  of  his  business  associates  could  be  induced  by  personal 
solicitation  to  make  contributions,  but  Mr.  Hanna  never  needed 
to  be  dunned.  He  would  say  to  the  committee  as  he  handed  to 
them  his  first  contribution:  "Boys,  I  suppose  you'll  need  some 
money.  If  you  run  short,  you  know  where  my  office  is."  Dur- 
ing the  Garfield  campaign  he  sent  four  different  checks  for 
$1000  each  to  the  State  Committee  in  Columbus;  and  this 
was  merely  one  incident  among  a  hundred.  In  the  fall  of  1887, 
for  instance,  the  local  campaign  committee  of  Cuyahoga  County 
found  itself  after  election  with  a  debt  of  $1260  on  its  hands. 
An  attempt  was  made  to  collect  the  money  from  prominent 
Republicans,  but  with  no  success.  One  morning  several  of 
the  committee  were  in  their  room,  talking  over  the  futile  efforts. 
Mr.  Hanna  came  in,  and  noticing  the  air  of  gloom,  said:  "It 
looks  pretty  blue  here  !  What's  the  matter  ?  "  They  told  him, 
and  much  to  their  surprise  and  joy  he  sat  down  at  the  table  and 
drew  his  own  check  for  the  whole  amount.  "There,"  he  said, 
"pay  your  debts  and  look  cheerful." 

He  gave  as  freely  to  individual  political  associates  as  to  com- 
mittees. Almost  all  his  political  friends  were  at  one  time  or 
another  in  debt  to  him.  We  have  already  seen  that  he  ren- 
dered to  Mr.  Foraker  some  assistance  at  a  moment  when  the 


POLITICAL   FRIENDS   AND   ENEMIES  147 

Governor,  at  that  time  a  poor  man,  was  really  in  grave  distress. 
He  constantly  helped  McKinley  by  loans,  by  taking  care  of 
notes  and  by  the  financing  of  his  friend's  campaigns.  General 
Charles  Grosvenor  was  another  local  politician  who  was  very 
much  beholden  to  Mr.  Hanna  for  financial  assistance.  A  friend 
or  associate  who  had  any  claim  at  all  could  depend  on  him  for 
effective  help ;  and  sometimes  the  need  of  help  would  be  an- 
ticipated and  the  help  rendered  without  solicitation. 

One  salient  instance  may  be  specified.  The  David  H.  Kim- 
berley  whom  Mr.  Hanna  had  permitted  in  1884  to  work  for 
Mr.  Edwin  Cowles  rather  than  himself  was  nominated  shortly 
afterwards  for  County  Treasurer.  He  was  poor,  and  his  asso- 
ciation with  Mr.  Hanna  in  politics  had  not  been  intimate. 
Shortly  after  his  nomination  a  young  man  came  to  his  store  and 
left  a  package  containing  $500  for  campaign  expenses,  but  re- 
fused to  divulge  the  name  of  the  contributor.  In  a  few  weeks 
another  $500  arrived  from  the  same  source,  and  just  before 
the  day  of  election  an  additional  $200.  The  last  instalment 
was  accompanied  by  a  note,  stating  that  the  $1200  could  be 
returned  after  election,  —  in  case  Mr.  Kimberley  were  success- 
ful, but  that  if  he  were  beaten  he  would  never  be  told  of  the 
name  of  the  donor.  He  learned  afterwards  indirectly  that  the 
contributions  were  made  by  Mark  Hanna.  Mr.  Kimberley 
was  elected.  When  he  was  about  to  assume  office,  he  found  he 
had  to  supply  a  heavy  bond  and  he  did  not  know  where  to  turn 
for  his  security.  He  was  just  coming  from  the  court-house 
where  he  had  been  copying  the  bond  with  his  own  hands,  when 
he  met  Mr.  Hanna  on  the  street.  "What's  the  matter,  Dave ? " 
the  latter  asked.  "You  look  pretty  serious  this  morning." 
"I  am  thinking,"  Mr.  Kimberley  said,  "about  my  bond  as 
County  Treasurer. "  Mr.  Hanna  asked  for  the  bond  and  looked 
it  over.  "My  gracious  !  a  million  dollars,"  he  exclaimed;  "are 
they  ever  going  to  stop  hammering  you?"  Mr.  Kimberley 
assured  him  that  it  was  an  exact  copy  of  the  bond  of  the  existing 
Treasurer.  Mr.  Hanna  took  it,  signed  it  himself,  and  persuaded 
five  or  six  of  his  well-to-do  friends  also  to  sign  it. 

I  have  cited  the  case  of  Mr.  Kimberley  at  some  length  be- 
cause in  this  particular  instance  more  than  one  motive  may 
have  prompted  Mr.  Hanna.  Mr.  Kimberley  was  running  for 


148      MARCUS    ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS    LIFE   AND   WORK 

the  office  of  County  Treasurer,  and  Mr.  Hanna  was  building 
up  the  business  of  a  recently  organized  bank.  The  Plain- 
Dealer  asserted  at  the  time  that  there  might  be  some  connec- 
tion between  Mr.  Raima's  interest  in  Mr.  Kimberley  and  his 
interest  in  his  bank.  If  so,  no  action  hurtful  to  the  interests 
of  the  county  resulted.  Mr.  Kimberley  was  reflected  and  no 
irregularities  were  discovered,  although  his  opponents  were 
ready  to  pounce  upon  evidence  thereof.  But  assuming  that 
the  help  rendered  by  Mr.  Hanna  to  Mr.  Kimberley  may  have 
been  prompted  by  a  desire  for  county  deposits,  such  a  motive 
does  not  explain  the  way  in  which  the  loan  was  made.  In  case 
Mr.  Kimberley  had  been  defeated,  Mr.  Hanna  did  not  want 
him  to  feel  any  personal  obligation  in  the  matter  —  an  obliga- 
tion which  would  have  been  onerous  to  a  poor  man.  Mr. 
Kimberley  himself  attributed  the  loan  to  Mr.  Hanna's  wish  to 
do  a  kindness  to  a  fellow-Republican  whose  means  were  not 
equal  to  the  expenses  of  his  canvass. 

However  we  are  to  regard  such  an  incident,  and  however 
little  we  may  like  the  fact  that  Mr.  Hanna  and  his  street  rail- 
way company  contributed  to  the  expenses  of  electing  council- 
men,  it  is  easy  to  over-estimate  the  importance  of  such  incidents. 
On  the  whole  and  in  the  long  run  Mr.  Hanna  did  not  make  his 
political  gifts  with  any  intention  of  buying  specific  services. 
His  political  gifts,  both  to  organizations  and  associates,  must  be 
considered  as  prompted  partly  by  the  same  motives  as  his 
charitable  gifts,  both  for  the  encouragement  of  worthy  causes 
and  the  success  of  needy  persons.  As  I  shall  describe  in  another 
connection  Mr.  Hanna  was  an  extraordinarily  and  even  a  some- 
what indiscriminately  generous  man.  He  gave  freely  and  with- 
out close  inquiry  to  anybody  or  purpose  which  could  fairly 
claim  assistance.  To  give  and  to  give  without  calculation  was 
one  of  the  dominant  impulses  of  his  nature.  In  a  business 
transaction  he  was  as  keen  as  another  man  about  getting  five 
dollars'  worth  for  the  expenditure  of  five  dollars ;  but  any  cause 
or  any  person  which  aroused  his  sympathies  or  interest  would 
unloosen  his  purse  strings  and  disarm  his  business  scruples. 
His  interest  in  political  causes  and  friends  was  just  as  much  an 
expression  of  his  better  nature  as  his  interest  in  charitable  causes 
and  needy  individuals.  He  spent  his  money  liberally  and  inno- 


POLITICAL   FRIENDS   AND   ENEMIES  149 

cently  in  every  way  which  seemed  to  him  worth  while ;  and, 
of  course,  politics,  and  in  particular  Republican  party  politics, 
were  from  his  point  of  view  extremely  well  worth  while. 

Mr.  Hanna's  personal  liberality  and  his  prominence  both  as 
a  business  man  and  politician  tended,  however,  to  make  the 
local  Republican  committees  depend  on  him  for  a  large  part 
of  their  supplies.  From  being  a  generous  contributor  he  passed 
by  easy  gradations  into  the  position  of  being  an  able  collector 
of  campaign  funds  from  his  business  associates.  He  had  the 
reputation  of  being  a  man  who  could  do  really  effective  work 
in  eliciting  contributions  from  his  fellow  Republicans,  and  this 
reputation  was  responsible  for  his  selection  as  financial  auxiliary 
to  the  Republican  National  Committee  of  1888.  The  political 
managers  saw  that  the  tariff  issue  afforded  them  an  extraor- 
dinarily good  opportunity  of  persuading  the  manufacturers  to 
"give  up."  Systematic  efforts -were  made  to  turn  the  opportu- 
nity to  good  account.  Mr.  Hanna's  district  was  northern  Ohio. 
He  raised  money  in  Cleveland,  in  Toledo,  in  the  Mahoning 
Valley  and  in  adjacent  territory.  His  collections  are  said  to 
have  reached  $100,000,  all  of  which  went  to  the  National 
Committee.  His  own  personal  contribution  to  the  same 
committee  was  $5000,  and  he  also  went  to  the  assistance  of 
the  county  and  state  committees. 

Although  Mr.  Hanna's  connection  .with  the  campaign  of 
1888  was  confined  to  the  work  of  securing  contributions,  it  was 
necessary  to  describe  at  this  point  the  complexion  which  the 
general  political  situation  was  assuming,  and  Mr.  Hanna's  own 
personal  relation  thereto.  During  the  Convention  and  campaign 
of  1888  the  political  forces  and  tendencies  which  culminated  in 
the  campaign  of  1896  and  which  gave  opportunity  and  meaning 
to  Mr.  Hanna's  subsequent  career  are  for  the  first  time  plainly  to 
be  distinguished.  The  idea  of  nominating  McKinley  was  born 
contemporaneously  with  the  appearance  of  the  conditions  which 
finally  resulted  in  his  nomination,  and  the  man  who  cherished 
the  personal  project  became  himself  the  political  representative 
of  a  certain  relation  between  business  and  politics,  implied  by 
these  conditions. 

The  campaign  resulted  in  the  election  of  Benjamin  Harrison, 
but  not  by  any  large  majority.  Mr.  Cleveland  had  a  plurality 


150      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

on  the  popular  vote,  and  the  change  of  a  few  thousand  ballots 
cast  in  New  York  and  Indiana  would  have  beaten  the  Republi- 
cans. They  succeeded  none  the  less  in  keeping  their  majority 
in  the  Senate  and  in  winning  a  small  majority  in  the  House 
of  Representatives,  which  was  subsequently  increased  by  un- 
seating Democrats  wherever  their  elections  could  be  plausibly 
contested.  In  the  winter  of  1889  and  1890,  when  the  new  Con- 
gress assembled,  the  Republicans  for  the  first  time  in  many  years 
were  in  complete  control  of  both  departments  of  the  General 
Government,  and  they  were  committed  to  the  passage  of  some 
legislation  looking  towards  the  reduction  of  the  surplus  without 
doing  any  injury  to  the  protective  system. 

In  November,  1889,  about  a  week  before  the  meeting  of  the 
new  Congress,  Mark  Hanna  went  to  Washington.  His  object 
in  making  the  trip  was  to  help  Mr.  McKinley  in  his  fight  for 
the  Speakership  of  the  House,  and  it  is  significant  that  he  took 
the  first  opportunity  which  offered  after  the  Convention  of  1888 
to  work  on  Mr.  McKinley's  behalf.  He  put  up  at  the  Ebbit 
House  and  took  an  active  part  in  the  canvass.  Mr.  William 
H.  Merriam  states  that  his  part  was  effective  as  well  as  active, 
for  he  actually  converted  to  Mr.  McKinley  some  votes  from 
Minnesota.  But  his  efforts  were  unavailing.  Mr.  McKinley's 
competitor  for  the  place,  Mr.  Thomas  B.  Reed,  was  selected  by 
the  caucus  by  a  majority  of  one  vote. 

Mr.  McKinley's  defeat  was  probably  beneficial  rather  than 
the  reverse  to  his  subsequent  career.  The  Speaker  appointed 
him  to  the  chairmanship  of  the  Ways  and  Means  Committee, 
and  as  chairman  he  became  nominally  responsible  for  the  new 
Republican  tariff  policy.  The  bill  in  which  it  was  embodied 
had  his  name  attached  to  it,  which  made  him  in  the  eyes  of  the 
country  more  than  ever  the  most  conspicuous  exponent  of  the 
theory  and  practice  of  high  protection. 

Inasmuch  as  their  victory  had  been  won  by  a  narrow  margin, 
the  Republicans  would  have  done  well  to  use  it  with  discretion. 
By  a  few  reductions  in  the  existing  schedules,  they  might  have 
quieted  antitariff  agitation  for  long  time  without  doing  any 
injury  to  the  protectionist  system.  But  the  beneficiaries  of 
the  tariff  were  in  the  saddle,  and  they  pursued  the  opposite 
course.  Rates  were  raised  all  along  the  line.  The  surplus  was 


MR.  HANNA  IN  THE  EARLY  NINETIES 


POLITICAL   FRIENDS   AND   ENEMIES  151 

abolished  largely  by  the  simple  device  of  spending  it.  The  rev- 
enue was  reduced  by  making  duties  which  were  almost  pro- 
hibitory entirely  so  and  by  abandoning  the  large  income  de- 
rived from  the  duty  on  raw  sugar,  which  at  that  time  was 
produced  only  in  small  quantities  in  this  country.  Heavy 
duties  were  levied  on  many  agricultural  products  which  were 
not  and  could  not  be  imported,  except  in  very  small  quantities, 
and  a  successful  attempt  was  made  to  establish  new  industries, 
such  as  the  manufacture  of  tin  plate  and  certain  grades  of  silk. 
Finally,  since  the  revenue  still  promised  to  be  excessive,  the 
appropriations  for  pensions  and  for  other  purposes  were  swollen 
beyond  all  previous  records. 

Such  was  the  policy  embodied  in  the  McKinley  Bill.  It 
proved  to  be  a  dangerous  policy  for  the  Republican  party.  The 
effect  of  the  bill  was  to  raise  prices  all  along  the  line.  Every 
drummer  became  an  effective  campaign  agent  for  the  Demo- 
crats ;  and  in  the  election  in  the  fall  of  1890,  following  the  pas- 
sage of  the  act,  the  Republicans  were  reduced  to  an  almost  in- 
significant minority  in  the  House  of  Representatives.  Two 
years  later  the  Democrats,  for  the  first  time  since  the  war,  elected 
their  presidential  candidate,  a  large  majority  in  the  lower  House 
and  a  small  majority  in  the  Senate.  Some  of  the  wiser  Re- 
publicans, such  as  James  G.  Elaine  and  Benjamin  Butterworth, 
one  of  Mr.  Hanna's  intimate  friends,  had  predicted  this  result 
and  tried  to  avoid  it;  but  in  truth  forces  had  been  unloosed 
which  were  beyond  individual  control.  The  policy  of  the  Re- 
publicans in  the  session  of  1889-1890  must  be  considered  as  a 
culminating  expression  of  a  method  of  economic  legislation 
which  had  prevailed  in  this  country  at  least  since  the  Civil  War. 
Under  this  method  the  only  interests  consulted  in  respect  to  a 
piece  of  economic  legislation  were  the  special  interests  thereby 
benefited ;  and  the  protective  tariff  was  only  one  illustration  of 
the  practice. 

In  the  case  of  the  McKinley  Bill  and  the  legislation  which 
accompanied  it,  the  practice  had  been  pushed  to  an  extreme 
which  exposed  the  incompatibility  between  the  unregulated 
demands  of  a  special  interest  and  the  manifest  requirements  of 
the  national  interest ;  but  the  error  was  natural,  and  the  manu- 
facturers were  only  behaving  as  all  the  other  special  interests 


152      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

had  behaved.  The  American  economic  system  had  been  con- 
ceived as  a  huge  profit-sharing  concern,  the  function  of  the  gov- 
ernment being  to  encourage  productive  enterprise  in  every  form 
by  lending  assistance  to  the  producers.  Business  of  all  kinds 
had  thus  become  inextricably  entangled  with  politics,  and  in  one 
way  or  another  the  private  income  of  the  majority  of  American 
citizens  was  very  much  influenced  by  the  government  legisla- 
tion. And  whatever  criticisms  may  be  passed  on  this  economic 
system  or  whatever  the  ensuing  excesses,  it  was  undoubtedly 
planned  in  good  faith  for  the  purpose  of  stimulating  American 
economic  expansion  in  all  its  branches  and  of  contributing  to 
the  prosperity  of  all  classes  of  American  society. 

The  business  men  and  politicians  of  the  day  were  so  accus- 
tomed to  his  method  of  promoting  American  economic  welfare 
that  they  accepted  it  as  a  matter  of  course.  Among  others  both 
William  McKinley  and  Mark  Hanna  accepted  it  as  so  funda- 
mental as  scarcely  to  need  any  defence.  Mistakes  might  be 
made  in  applying  the  policy,  abuses  might  arise  under  its  ad- 
ministration of  the  resulting  legislation,  and  different  special 
interests  might  fight  over  the  distribution  of  the  benefits,  but 
the  system  itself  was  rooted  in  the  American  tradition  of  eco- 
nomic legislation.  In  spite  of  protests  against  specific  excesses 
and  abuses,  public  opinion  overwhelmingly  supported  the  sys- 
tem as  a  whole,  and  its  inevitable  effects  were  to  make  business 
prosperity  depend  upon  the  course  of  political  agitation  and 
the  result  of  elections.  It  was  precisely  the  interdependence 
between  business  and  politics  which  gave  to  a  man  like  Mark 
Hanna,  who  embodied  the  alliance,  an  opportunity  of  effective 
influence. 

The  Republican  disasters  in  the  elections  of  1890  brought 
with  them  unpleasant  consequences,  possible  and  actual,  for 
Mark  Hanna  and  his  immediate  associates.  In  order  to  un- 
derstand the  resulting  political  complications,  we  must  return 
to  the  course  of  political  events  in  the  state  of  Ohio.  The 
prompt  exhibition  after  the  Convention  of  Mr.  Hanna's  friend- 
ship for  McKinley  was  balanced  by  an  even  prompter  exhibition 
of  his  hostility  to  Mr.  Foraker.  The  -latter  was  once  again  a 
candidate  for  governor.  Mr.  Hanna  attended  the  State  Con- 
vention held  in  June,  1889,  at  Columbus,  and  opposed  Mr. 


POLITICAL  FRIENDS  AND   ENEMIES  153 

Foraker's  nomination.  McKinley  also  was  present  and  made 
a  speech  nominating  another  candidate,  in  which  he  had  re- 
marked that  "no  obligation  to  party  can  justify  treachery  to 
party  associates."  But  Mr.  Foraker  was  too  strong  for  his 
enemies.  He  was  nominated  and  stumped  the  state  with  his 
usual  vigor.  He  was  opposed  by  the  Democrats,  chiefly  on 
the  ground  that  he  was  seeking  a  third  term,  and  he  was  beaten 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  some  of  the  Republican  ticket  were 
elected.  His  defeat  increased  the  schism  between  himself  and 
the  McKinleyites,  who  were  erroneously  accused  in  the  news- 
papers of  treachery  to  the  state  ticket. 

Another  incident  of  the  fall  of  1889  served  to  intensify  the 
ill  feeling  which  certain  of  Mr.  Hanna's  friends  bore  towards 
the  redoubtable  Governor.  Late  in  September  a  Cincinnati 
newspaper  published  an  alleged  contract  which  implicated  the 
Democratic  candidate  for  governor,  James  E.  Campbell,  in  an 
attempt  to  use  his  official  position  as  a  congressional  repre- 
sentative for  the  purpose  of  selling  to  the  government  a  patent 
ballot-box.  A  copy  of  the  contract  had  been  furnished  to  the 
editor  of  the  paper  by  Governor  Foraker.  A  few  days  later  it 
was  divulged  that  John  Sherman,  William  McKinley  and  Ben- 
jamin Butterworth,  among  others,  were  also  signers  of  the  al- 
leged contract.  It  developed  almost  immediately  that  the 
paper  was  a  forgery  and  that  the  Governor  had  been  misled 
into  accepting  it  as  genuine.  The  fact  that  Mr.  Foraker  had 
given  to  the  press  a  paper  implicating  prominent  Republicans 
of  Ohio  in  a  dishonorable  transaction  without  giving  them  any 
warning  or  allowing  them  any  hearing  was  attributed  by  the 
injured  gentlemen  to  personal  malice. 

In  the  meantime  Mark  Hanna  was  trying  to  procure  from  a 
Republican  President  certain  offices  for  his  political  associates 
in  Cleveland  —  thus  compensating  himself  for  the  loss  of  his 
influence  with  the  Governor.  But  for  some  reason  President 
Harrison  disliked  Mr.  Hanna  and  either  ignored  or  forgot  the 
efforts  which  the  latter  had  used  on  behalf  of  his  election. 
Every  one  of  his  recommendations  was  turned  down.  He  did 
not  even  succeed  when  he  requested  the  appointment  of  an  old 
friend  as  lighthouse  master  at  the  end  of  the  Cleveland  Break- 
water. These  recommendations  was  usually  made  through 


154      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

Senator  Sherman  and  indorsed  by  him,  but  other  candidates 
were  always  appointed.  Senator  Sherman  wrote  to  Mr.  Hanna 
in  April,  1889,  "I  am  weary  and  discouraged, — weary  from  pres- 
sure based  upon  the  opinion  that  I  can  do  something  for  my 
friends,  and  discouraged  because  I  have  not  been  able  to  do 
anything." 

Mr.  Hanna  also  became  involved  in  a  controversy  with  Con- 
gressman T.  E.  Burton  about  the  appointment  to  the  head  of 
the  Cleveland  post-office.  Mr.  Hanna  was  backing  our  old 
friend  William  M.  Bayne,  —  the  man  whom  he  had  urged  twice 
upon  Foraker  for  the  oil  inspectorship  and  whom  he  had  nom- 
inated for  mayor.  Mr.  Burton's  candidate  was  A.  T.  Ander- 
son. In  this  instance  the  Postmaster-general,  Mr.  Wanamaker, 
was  favorable  to  Mr.  Hanna,  but  his  influence  was  of  no  avail. 
President  Harrison  insisted  that  Mr.  Burton,  as  the  local  con- 
gressman, was  entitled  to  the  appointment ;  and  he  received  it. 
Mr.  Burton  states  that  his  relations  with  Mr.  Hanna  remained 
friendly  after  this  little  passage-at-arms,  but  they  were  not 
quite  as  friendly  as  before.  Evidently  at  this  particular  period 
Mr.  Hanna  must  have  felt  that  however  interesting  was  this 
game  of  politics,  the  winnings  were  small  in  proportion  to  the 
losses. 

He  had,  however,  one  compensation.  He  was  making  some 
very  fast  friends  among  some  very  fine  men.  At  the  time  when 
his  political  intimacy  with  both  Sherman  and  McKinley  was 
increasing,  he  was  also  becoming  extremely  friendly  with  Ben- 
jamin Butterworth.  Mr.  Butterworth  was  not  only  an  able 
man  and  a  disinterested  public  servant,  but  he  was  gifted  with 
a  highly  expansive  and  sympathetic  disposition.  The  warmth 
of  his  feelings  towards  his  friends  obtained  a  very  characteris- 
tic expression  in  his  correspondence  with  them.  His  letters 
to  Mr.  Hanna  are  not  like  the  letters  of  Mr.  Hanna's  other  asso- 
ciates, that  is,  merely  dry  business  scripts.  They  overflow 
with  expressions  of  personal  feeling,  and  are  the  kind  of  letters 
which  only  a  man  of  lively  affections  and  some  imagination 
could  write  to  a  sympathetic  friend.  Letters  of  this  kind  are 
so  rare  in  the  life  of  a  man  like  Mr.  Hanna  that  they  deserve  to 
be  quoted  for  their  own  and  for  his  sake. 

Under  the  date  of  June  12,  1890,  Mr.  Butterworth  writes : 


POLITICAL   FRIENDS   AND   ENEMIES  155 

"I  have  your  delightful  scrawl  before  me  again,  and  whenever 
I  see  the  name  of  Hanna  there  comes  before  me  your  good- 
natured  face  and  kindly  bearing,  the  influence  of  which  is  to 
impel  me  to  pack  my  satchel  and  go  to  Cleveland,  where  I  can 
see  you  in  the  flesh,  but  duty  rides  me  as  if  I  were  a  flagging 
steed  and  had  some  devil  mounted  on  me  with  whip  and  spur 
to  hound  me  on.  Never  mind,  the  day  is  coming  when  I  will 
have  some  time  to  devote  to  my  friends,  and  the  night  is  ap- 
proaching when  there  will  be  a  long  rest  and  a  delightful  sleep 
on  the  bosom  of  our  common  mother.  Whether  all  there  is  of 
us  will  lie  down  to  that  delightful  slumber  I  do  not  know,  but 
I  know  that  there  is  in  us  a  spark  of  divinity  which  shall  vita- 
lize a  new-born  man,  and  that  together  you  and  I  will  stroll 
along  by  the  still  waters  of  another  world.  Of  course  you  will 
have  a  higher  degree  of  happiness  and  better  luck  there,  just 
as  you  have  here,  and  that  you  will  deserve  there,  even  as  you  do 
here." 

In  February,  1891,  Mr.  Butterworth  deals  with  the  political  sit- 
uation in  Ohio  in  the  following  terms:  " Touching  politics,  you 
will  see  that  the  champion  of  forgery  is  still  splashing  in  the 
waters  and  aspiring  to  that  which  only  good  men  ought  to  attain 
to.  John  Sherman  is  as  usual  playing  fast  and  loose.  There 
is  a  struggle  going  on  in  regard  to  the  postmastership  in  Cin- 
cinnati. Sherman  is  afraid  of  McKinley  and  worried  about 
Harrison.  McKinley  is  troubled  about  both  Harrison  and 
Sherman,  and  Sherman  is  as  anxious  to  be  President  and  con- 
tinued in  the  Senatorial  office  as  ever  he  was  in  his  life,  so  that 
none  of  them  exercises  any  influence  with  reference  to  clean  and 
honorable  politics,  but  simply  play  in  the  game." 

A  little  later  Mr.  Butterworth,  having  failed  of  reelection  to 
Congress,  was  appointed,  partly,  it  would  appear,  owing  to  Mr. 
Hanna's  influence,  to  an  official  position  with  the  Columbian 
Exposition  Company;  and  on  March  18,  1891,  he  writes  from 
Chicago  the  following  characteristic  letter  to  Mr.  Hanna: — 

"March  18,  1891. 
"My  DEAR  HANNA  :  — 

"It  is  not  probable  that  you  are  in  a  frame  of  mind  that 
would  enable  you  to  enjoy  a  line  from  an  old  friend,  who  snatches 


156      MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

a  minute  from  an  hour  heavily  mortgaged  to  other  duties  to 
tumble  upon  you  a  few  rambling  observations.  Well !  Mark, 
I  am  out  of  the  procession.  I  no  longer  keep  the  lock-step 
prescribed  by  party  discipline  nor  wear  the  fetters  of  a  political 
bondsman.  As  Uncle  John  said  (not  meaning  a  word  of  it),  'I 
can  now  say  just  what  I  d — n  please.'  I  would  have  added, 
if  I  had  been  in  Uncle  John's  pants,  'so  long  as  no  one  hears 
me.'  I  am  out  of  it,  and,  my  dear  friend,  I  feel  like  a  tired  har- 
vester at  set  of  sun,  when  the  cradle  has  been  thrown  aside, 
and  he  tumbles  on  the  grass  beneath  some  spreading  tree. 

"I  met  and  lunched  with  our  good  friend  Governor  Merriam. 
He  thinks  you  are  one  of  the  best  fellows  on  earth,  in  fact,  he  said 
so ;  and  I  hadn't  the  heart  to  correct  him.  And  to-day,  so  far 
as  any  remark  of  mine  is  concerned,  Governor  Merriam  thinks 
his  eulogy  of  you  was  approved  of  by  me. 

"It  is  seven  o'clock  P.M.  I  am  here  alone.  The  shadows 
of  night  have  settled  on  this  restless  city.  I  feel  less  alone  here 
communing  with  you,  breaking  your  rest,  than  if  I  was  in  the 
motley  throng  that  gathers  nightly  at  the  Palmer  House." 

Letters  such  as  those  of  Mr.  Butterworth  are  unique  in  Mr. 
Hanna's  correspondence.  He  received,  of  course,  many  letters 
overflowing  with  expressions  of  personal  feeling,  but  the 
letters  which  he  received  from  political  friends  and  associates 
refer  merely  to  matters  of  temporary  political  and  personal 
business.  This  is  particularly  true  in  respect  to  his  correspond- 
ence with  Mr.  McKinley.  Only  about  a  score  of  letters  and 
some  four  telegrams  written  by  Mr.  McKinley  to  Mr.  Hanna 
have  been  preserved ;  and  the  great  majority  of  these  are  trivial 
in  character.  It  is,  consequently,  impossible  to  find  any  signifi- 
cant indications  in  their  correspondence  of  the  increasing  in- 
timacy between  the  two  men.  Mr.  McKinley  was  in  all  his 
political  relations  an  extremely  wary  man.  He  early  adopted 
the  practice  of  not  committing  to  paper  any  assertions  or 
promises  which  might  subsequently  prove  to  be  embarrassing  ; 
and  even  in  the  case  of  important  conversations  over  the  "tele- 
phone, he  frequently  took  the  precaution  of  having  a  witness 
at  his  end  of  the  line.  It  is  scarcely  to  be  expected  that  any 
letters  of  his  will  be  of  much  assistance,  either  to  his  own 


POLITICAL   FRIENDS   AND   ENEMIES  157 

biographer  or  that  of  any  political  associate  —  in  spite  of,  or 
rather  because  of,  the  fact  that  McKinley  late  in  his  life  wrote 
too  many  of  his  letters  with  a  biographer  so  much  in  mind. 

All  important  matters  were  discussed  between  the  two  men 
in  private  conference.  When  a  personal  interview  was  impossi- 
ble, a  confidential  intermediary  was  usually  employed.  Such 
methods  of  correspondence  suited  Mr.  Hanna  as  well  as  Mr. 
McKinley,  not  because  he  was  to  the  same  extent  a  man  of 
caution  and  precaution,  but  because  in  business  he  had  been 
accustomed  to  settling  important  affairs  by  means  of  personal 
interviews.  As  in  the  case  of  almost  all  genuine  Americans, 
his  natural  method  of  expression  was  the  spoken  word,  not 
only  because  the  spoken  word  was  direct  and  frank,  but  be- 
cause it  carried  with  it  the  force  of  a  man's  will  and  person- 
ality. Letters  were  merely  the  forerunners  and  the  consequences 
of  personal  interviews,  or  else  a  sort  of  hyphen  between  them. 

A  majority  of  the  surviving  letters  written  by  Mr.  McKinley 
to  Mr.  Hanna  date,  however,  from  this  particular  period.  Dur- 
ing 1889  and  1890,  Mr.  McKinley  spent  most  of  his  time  in 
Washington,  and  was,  consequently,  obliged  to  write  some  few 
notes  to  Mr.  Hanna  about  patronage,  and  about  such  legisla- 
tive matters  as  the  metal  schedules  of  the  tariff  bill.  Later, 
when  one  of  them  was  living  in  Canton  and  the  other  in  Cleve- 
land, they  were  connected  by  a  special  telephone  service.  Some 
of  the  notes  of  this  period  may  be  quoted,  not  because  of  their 
intrinsic  importance,  but  merely  as  a  sample  of  the  sort  of  letter 
which  Mr.  McKinley  was  in  the  habit  of  writing  to  his  friend. 

During  the  fall  of  1890  he  was  fighting  hard  for  reelection 
to  Congress,  and  Mr.  Hanna  was  naturally  taking  an  active 
interest  in  his  canvass.  The  following  note  was  written  in 
Cleveland,  on  the  occasion  of  a  short  visit,  unexpectedly  made 
by  Mr.  McKinley  during  Mr.  Hanna's  absence. 

"  CLEVELAND,  Oct.  6,  1890. 
"DEAR  MB.  HANNA:  — 

"  Awfully  sorry  not  to  see  you.  Came  up  last  night  and  have 
remained  until  the  last  moment  and  find  that  you  will  not  be 
home  until  evening.  Would  stay  longer,  but  have  a  meeting 
to-night. 


158      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

"  Frank  Osborne  will  talk  to  you  fully  and  he  will  explain  to 
you  all.  I  start  out  to-morrow  for  the  remainder  of  the  cam- 
paign. The  outlook  is  surprisingly  favorable. 

"Your  friend, 

"W.  McKiNLEY,  JR." 

A  little  over  a  month  later,  after  he  had  been  defeated  for  re- 
election to  Congress,  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Hanna  as  follows:  — 

"CHICAGO,  ILL.,  Nov.  12,  1890. 
"MY  DEAR  MR.  HANNA :  — 

"I  have  your  kind  favor  of  Nov.  10.  I  am  here  for  a  little 
rest  —  sorry  not  to  have  seen  you  when  last  in  Cleveland  — 
may  run  up  there  before  my  return  to  Washington,  but  am 
not  certain.  At  all  events  I  will  see  you. 

"  I  agree  with  you  that  defeat  under  the  circumstances  was 
for  the  best. 

"With  kind  regards 

"  I  am  sincerely 

"W.  McKiNLEY." 

"P.  S.  There  is  no  occasion  for  alarm.  We  must  take  no 
backward  step." 

Evidently  from  the  foregoing  note  Mr.  Hanna  had  not  been 
at  all  discouraged  by  the  Republican  defeat  in  the  fall  of  1890  — 
at  least  in  so  far  as  Major  McKinley's  political  future  was  con- 
cerned. He  evidently  argued  that  inasmuch  as  the  legisla- 
tion with  which  McKinley's  name  was  associated  had  been 
disapproved  by  public  opinion,  it  was  just  as  well  for  Mc- 
Kinley  to  retire  from  a  region  of  political  action  in  which 
he  had  incurred  unpopularity,  and  to  continue  his  career 
in  some  other  part  of  the  political  battlefield.  At  all 
events  the  plan  rapidly  took  shape  of  nominating  McKinley 
for  governor  in  the  summer  of  1891 ;  and  this  plan  was 
successfully  accomplished.  The  Convention  was  held  in  June, 
and  the  Major  was  placed  at  the  head  of  the  ticket,  prac- 
tically without  opposition.  He  was  not  opposed  by  Foraker; 
that  gentleman  had  other  irons  in  the  fire.  The  Legislature 
elected  in  the  fall  of  1891  named  a  Senator  to  succeed  Mr.  Sher- 
man; and  Mr.  Foraker  was  anticipating  and  seeking  an  en- 


POLITICAL   FRIENDS  AND   ENEMIES  159 

larged  sphere  of  usefulness  in  Washington.  The  very  fact 
which  may  have  smoothed  the  way  for  the  nomination  of 
McKinley  threatened  the  political  future  of  another  of  Mr. 
Hanna's  political  friends  —  John  Sherman  himself. 

In  the  campaign  which  followed,  Mr.  Hanna  had,  conse- 
quently, two  objects  to  accomplish,  both  of  which  demanded 
unusual  efforts.  It  was  extremely  necessary  to  elect  Mr. 
McKinley.  His  political  future  was  not  necessarily  compro- 
mised by  the  unpopularity  of  the  McKinley  Bill  and  his  failure 
to  be  returned  to  the  House  of  Representatives,  because  a  turn 
of  the  tide  might  bring  his  policy  of  high  protectionism  back 
into  favor.  But  a  defeat  in  his  candidacy  for  governor  might 
well  be  disastrous  to  the  presidential  candidacy,  which  both 
of  the  friends  already  had  in  mind.  It  would  create  the  impres- 
sion of  an  insecure  hold  on  the  people  of  his  own  state,  and 
thereafter  it  would  be  difficult  to  keep  his  figure  before  the  public 
as  a  presidential  possibility.  Yet  there  was  no  certainty  of 
McKinley's  election.  Republicanism  was  suffering  a  temporary 
eclipse  all  over  the  country.  Foraker  had  been  defeated  two 
years  before.  The  state  of  Ohio,  which  was  always  Republi- 
can on  presidential  years,  frequently  disconcerted  the  party 
machine  by  going  Democratic  on  off  years. 

But  the  sentorial  fight  complicated  the  election  still  further, 
and  aroused  in  Mr.  Hanna  an  almost  equal  interest.  He  con- 
tinued to  be  a  close  political  friend  of  Senator  Sherman,  and 
for  personal  reasons  ardently  desired  both  the  victory  of  the 
Senator  and  the  defeat  of  Mr.  Foraker.  The  failure  to  reelect 
Mr.  Sherman  after  his  long  service  in  the  Senate  would  in  Mr. 
Raima's  eyes  have  been  a  disgrace  to  his  native  state.  Yet 
in  order  to  return  Mr.  Sherman  to  the  Senate,  it  was  necessary 
to  canvass  the  whole  state  by  districts,  and  to  see  that  enough 
candidates  for  the  Legislature  were  pledged  to  vote  for  him. 

In  the  campaign  of  1891  Mr.  Hanna  gave  even  more  of  his 
time  to  Senator  Sherman's  candidacy  than  he  did  to  that  of  Major 
McKinley.  He  undoubtedly  took  much  more  pains  to  secure 
Mr.  McKinley' s  election  than  he  did  in  the  case  of  an  ordinary 
Republican  candidate;  but  his  efforts  for  his  friend  were  con- 
fined chiefly  to  raising  money.  He  could  trust  the  State  Com- 
mittee to  work  hard  for  the  regular  candidate  for  governor. 


160      MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

Mr.  Sherman's  interest,  on  the  other  hand,  required  personal 
direction,  and  Mr.  Hanna  assumed  a  large  part  of  the  work. 
His  correspondence  during  these  months  is  filled  far  more  with 
the  details  of  the  Sherman,  than  with  those  of  the  McKinley, 
campaign. 

He  went,  indeed,  to  unusual  personal  exertions  to  secure  for 
McKinley  a  large  campaign  fund.  He  solicited  contributions 
over  his  own  personal  signature,  not  merely  in  Ohio,  but  from 
manufacturers  in  Chicago  and  Pittsburgh,  on  the  ground  that 
the  defeat  of  McKinley  would  be  interpreted  as  a  further  dis- 
aster to  the  general  cause  of  protection.  While  frequently 
rebuffed  on  the  ground  that  Ohio  ought  to  take  care  of  her 
own  protectionists,  he  obtained  some  little  money  from  these 
irregular  sources.  He  seems  to  have  been  unusually  success- 
ful in  collecting  money  in  Cleveland,  some  of  which  went  to 
the  candidate  himself  for  personal  expenses.  On  August  30, 
1891,  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Hanna  :  "I  am  a  thousand  times  obliged 
for  your  letter  with  enclosure.  I  will  forward  it  at  once  to  the 
State  Committee.  I  beg  you  will  give  to  all  of  my  friends 
who  participated  my  sincere  thanks.  It  was  most  gen- 
erous of  you  and  others ;  and  I  have  to  thank  you  most  of  all." 
Two  weeks  later  he  writes:  "Your  favor  of  September  7  I 
find  here  upon  my  return  home  to-day.  Please  receive  my  sin- 
cere thanks  for  your  goodness,  and  now  I  beg  to  suggest  that 
you  forward  direct  to  the  Committee  any  other  contributions 
that  may  be  placed  in  your  hands.  I  have  sufficient  to  defray 
my  personal  expenses."  The  payment  of  the  personal  ex- 
penses of  a  candidate  had  long  been  customary.  Garfield 
received  an  allowance  for  his  entertaining  at  Mentor  during 
the  campaign  of  1880,  and  later  in  1896  the  National  Commit- 
tee allowed  McKinley  $10,000  for  personal  expenses. 

In  the  case  of  Mr.  Sherman's  candidacy,  Mr.  Hanna's  efforts 
were  not  confined  to  raising  money.  A  good  many  thousand 
dollars  were  indeed  contributed  —  partly  by  Senator  Sher- 
man himself  —  for  the  purpose  of  assisting  legislative  candi- 
dates in  doubtful  districts;  and  this  money  was  placed  in  the 
hands  of  the  chairman  of  the  State  Executive  Committee, 
Mr.  W.  M.  Hahn,  who  was  favorable  to  Mr.  Sherman's  reelec- 
tion. But  in  addition  special  efforts  had  to  be  made  to  pledge 


POLITICAL   FRIENDS  AND    ENEMIES  161 

legislative  candidates  to  Sherman  rather  than  to  Foraker,  and  in 
case  a  pledge  was  refused  to  bring  the  pressure  of  local  public 
opinion  upon  an  adverse  or  doubtful  nominee.  Agents  were 
sent  all  over  the  state  to  carry  on  this  work.  Not  a  district 
was  neglected  which  offered  any  promise  of  a  fruitful  return. 

In  the  beginning  Senator  Sherman  had  not  taken  very  seri- 
ously the  threatened  opposition.  Later,  however,  Captain  Don- 
aldson, a  state  committeeman  who  for  years  had  made  a  specialty 
of  looking  after  the  legislative  districts,  and  who  was  an  ardent 
supporter  of  Mr.  Sherman,  was  placed  in  charge  of  the  details 
of  the  canvass.  He  calculated  on  being  able  to  secure  some 
fifty-three  votes  for  Sherman  in  the  caucus;  but  in  order  to 
do  so  he  needed  some  $10,000  to  spend  in  the  doubtful  counties. 
He  went  to  Cleveland,  and  explained  the  situation  to  Mr. 
Hanna,  who  promised  him  the  money.  Senator  Sherman  him- 
self selected  the  man  to  whom  the  disbursement  of  this  fund 
was  intrusted.  They  did  not  count  upon  any  votes  from  Hamil- 
ton County,  in  spite  of  Mr.  Sherman's  expectations  to  the  con- 
trary, but  a  unanimous  delegation  from  Cleveland  was  con- 
sidered indispensable.  Mr.  Hanna  took  personal  charge  of  his 
own  county  —  the  importance  of  which  may  be  judged  from 
the  following  extract  from  a  letter  of  Senator  Sherman  to  Mr. 
Hanna,  dated  Sept.  22, 1891.  "I  am  assured,"  he  writes,  "from 
Columbus  that  if  the  nominees  for  the  Legislature  from  Cuy- 
ahoga  County  are  substantially  solid  for  me,  it  will  settle  the 
senatorial  contest  and  greatly  relieve  the  canvass.  So  I  feel 
that  you  are  fighting  the  battle  for  the  state."  A  week  later, 
after  the  local  primaries  had  been  held,  he  writes :  "You  made 
a  glorious  fight  in  Cleveland,  for  which  I  am  under  a  thousand 
obligations  to  you.  The  result  is  extremely  gratifying,  and  I 
agree  with  you  that  without  the  active  support  you  and  others 
have  rendered,  we  might  have  been  defeated  by  superior  or- 
ganization." 

On  election  day  Mr.  Hanna  and  his  friends  won  a  decisive 
victory.  In  a  year  of  general  Republican  defeat,  Mr.  Mc- 
Kinley  was  elected  governor  by  an  unusually  large  majority. 
Immediately  thereafter,  Thomas  B.  Reed,  the  former  Speaker, 
who  had  stumped  Ohio  during  the  campaign,  wrote  to  Mr. 
McKinley,  "  I  am  much  rejoiced  over  your  victory,  which  is  the 


162      MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

only  bright  spot  in  the  last  elections.  Your  State  Committee 
gave  me  a  hard  season,  but  it  was  wound  up  so  delightfully 
at  Mark  Raima's  that  if  you  ever  want  to  coax  me  to  do 
anything  you  had  better  send  Hanna."  The  Legislature  was 
Republican  by  a  good  majority. 

Senator  Sherman's  friends  calculated  on  the  face  of  the  re- 
turns that  he  would  beat  Foraker  in  the  caucus,  and  they  were 
surprised  to  find  shortly  after  the  election  that  the  most  confi- 
dent claims  were  made  from  the  Foraker  headquarters  of  a 
Foraker  victory.  Certain  members  of  the  Legislature,  includ- 
ing three  from  Cleveland,  who  were  either  pledged  to  Sherman 
or  were  counted  upon  by  his  managers  were  threatening  to 
backslide.  A  week  before  the  caucus  Mr.  Hanna  went  to 
Columbus  and  took  personal  charge  of  the  Sherman  campaign. 
The  situation  looked  desperate ;  but  it  was  saved,  so  Mr.  Sher- 
man himself  stated  to  his  friends,  by  Mr.  Hanna's  energy, 
enthusiasm  and  ability  to  bend  other  men  to  his  will.  Three 
of  the  Cleveland  representatives,  who  had  gone  into  hiding, 
were  unearthed  and  forced  into  line.  When  the  caucus  was 
held,  Senator  Sherman  received  fifty-three  votes  to  thirty- 
eight  for  Foraker. 

On  January  9  Senator  Sherman  wrote  to  Mr.  Hanna  the  fol- 
lowing letter :  — 

"  MY  DEAR  SIB  :  — 

"  Now,  after  the  smoke  of  battle  is  cleared  away,  I  wish  first 
of  all  and  above  all  to  express  to  you  my  profound  gratitude 
and  sincere  respects  for  the  part  you  have  taken  in  the  recent 
Senatorial  canvass.  I  feel  that  without  you  I  would  have  been 
beaten.  It  was  your  foresight  in  securing  the  Cleveland 
delegation  that  gave  us  the  strongest  support  and  made  it 
possible  to  counteract  the  evil  influence  of  the  Hamilton  County 
delegation. 

"  You  have  been  a  true  friend,  liberal,  earnest  and  sincere, 
without  any  personal  selfish  motive,  but  only  guided  by  a  sense 
of  what  is  best  for  the  people  of  Ohio  and  of  the  country.  I 
wish  you  to  know  that  I  appreciate  all  this  and  will  treasure  it 
as  long  as  I  live  and  only  wish  the  time  may  come  when  I  may 
in  some  way  show  that  I  am  deserving  of  all  your  kindness. 


POLITICAL    FRIENDS   AND   ENEMIES  163 

"  When  I  was  about  to  pay  the  bills,  Hahn  said  you  had  as- 
sumed some  or  had  provided  means  for  the  payment  of  certain 
expenses.  It  is  not  right  that  you  should  bear  this  burden, 
and  I  hope  you  will  frankly  state  to  me  what  amount  you  have 
expended  and  what  obligations  you  have  incurred,  so  that  I  may 
at  least  share  it  with  you.  I  have  so  written  to  Hahn.  It  is 
a  source  of  great  satisfaction  to  me  that  our  canvass  was  made 
without  the  expenditure  of  a  single  dollar  for  boodle,  with  no 
bitterness  to  our  adversaries,  and  with  no  appeals  for  our  can- 
didate to  the  interested  cupidity  or  ambition  of  the  Senators 
and  members. 

"Please  give  my  kindly  greetings  to  your  wife  and  tell  her  for 
me  that  she  is  lucky  to  have  so  good  a  husband,  the  soul  of  honor. 

"Very  sincerely  yours, 

"JOHN  SHERMAN." 

The  foregoing  letter  speaks  for  itself,  and  calls  for  only  one 
comment.  In  spite  of  Senator  Sherman's  professions  of  grati- 
tude he  never  mentions  Mr.  Raima's  name  in  the  lengthy  ac- 
count of  his  final  election  to  the  Senate,  which  appears  in  his 
"Reminiscences."  Indeed,  Mr.  Hanna's  name  never  appears 
in  the  entire  book.  The  volume  was  published  in  1895  and 
1896,  so  that  Mr.  Sherman's  later  grievance  against  Mr.  Hanna, 
if  grievance  it  was,  could  have  had  nothing  to  do  with  the 
omission. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE   MAKING   OF  A   PRESIDENT 

THE  victory  in  Ohio  in  the  fall  of  1891  was  the  first  substan- 
tial triumph  of  Mark  Hanna's  political  career.  Theretofore 
the  candidates  in  whose  election  he  was  most  interested  had 
usually  been  beaten ;  and  these  frequent  failures  must  have  been 
trying  to  a  man  who  was  accustomed  to  succeed,  and  whose 
cherished  political  purposes  were  all  related  to  the  election  to 
office  of  certain  friends  and  associates.  The  victories  of  Mc- 
Kinley  and  Sherman  must,  consequently,  have  been  all  the  more 
gratifying.  The  first  constituted  an  important  step  towards 
the  realization  of  Mr.  Hanna's  dearest  ambition.  The  second 
was  a  blow  to  the  prestige  of  his  irreconcilable  opponent,  and 
made  it  easier  to  keep  control  of  the  state  organization  in  Mc- 
Kinley's  interest.  Thus  the  elections  of  1891  had  done  much 
to  repair  the  damage  caused  by  the  disaster  of  the  previous 
fall.  Mr.  McKinley's  prestige  would  be  considerably  enhanced 
by  his  selection  during  a  year  of  Republican  defeat  to  an  office 
from  which  one  Republican  had  already  graduated  to  the 
presidency.  McKinley  had  become  personally  more  than  ever 
a  presidential  possibility. 

The  question  immediately  to  be  considered  was  whether 
anything  could  or  should  be  done  to  push  the  candidacy  at 
the  coming  National  Convention.  The  situation  was  difficult 
and  complicated.  The  most  prominent  candidate  for  the  nom- 
ination was,  of  course,  President  Benjamin  Harrison.  It  is 
always  a  dangerous  matter  to  oppose  the  renomination  of  a. 
President  who  has  done  nothing  to  disqualify  himself  for  a, 
second  term.  A  strong  anti-administration  sentiment  is  neces- 
sary to  overcome  the  initial  advantage  which  a  President  can 
derive  from  the  prestige  and  patronage  of  his  office ;  and  an  op- 
ponent is  further  handicapped  because  his  candidacy  must  be 
based  partly  on  a  criticism  of  a  President  derived  from  his, 

164 


THE   MAKING   OF  A   PRESIDENT  165 

own  party.  Whenever  a  fight  is  made,  it  tends  to  become  bitter 
and  threatens  a  dangerous  schism  within  the  ranks  of  the  Faith- 
ful. 

Strong,  however,  as  was  the  position  of  the  President,  it 
presented  certain  weaknesses,  which  the  friends  of  an  alter- 
native candidate  could  scarcely  ignore.  Mr,  Harrison  was  per- 
sonally unpopular.  He  had  made  many  enemies  in  the  party, 
who  would  have  been  ,glad  to  see  him  defeated.  On  the  sur- 
face his  nomination  was  not  by  any  means  assured.  A  ma- 
jority of  the  delegates  were  not  pledged  to  vote  for  him.  The 
disaffected  elements  in  the  party  might  be  able  to  hold  up  the 
nomination  and  concentrate  upon  some  other  candidate.  Among 
the  disaffected  Republicans  was  Mr.  Hanna.  He  had  not  been 
well  treated  by  Mr.  Harrison  and  would  in  any  event  have  been 
opposed  to  the  President's  renomination.  In  September,  1891, 
an  attempt  had  been  made  to  disarm  his  opposition.  His  friend, 
Charles  Foster,  who  was  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  prevailed 
upon  the  President  to  offer  to  Mr.  Hanna  the  office  of  Treas- 
urer of  the  National  Committee.  It  was  a  position  which 
he  was  well  qualified  to  fill,  and  which  under  ordinary  circum- 
stances he  would  have  been  likely  to  accept.  But  its  acceptance 
would  have  tied  him  to  the  administration,  and  he  declined. 
He  wished  to  remain  free  to  take  any  advantage  of  President 
Harrison's  lack  of  strength  which  the  situation,  as  it  developed, 
permitted. 

Under  the  circumstances  the  plan  was  adopted  of  keeping 
the  McKinley  candidacy  above  the  surface  but  in  the  back- 
ground. No  attempt  was  made  to  secure  the  election  of  dele- 
gates pledged  to  McKinley.  Mr.  McKinley  himself  assumed 
the  correct  attitude  of  being  overtly  favorable  to  Harrison's 
renomination.  But  preparations  were  made  to  bring  McKinley 
forward,  in  case  Mr.  Harrison's  renomination  proved  to  be  diffi- 
cult. Mr.  Hanna's  hope  was  that  enough  delegates  would  be 
kept  away  from  the  President  by  a  revival  of  the  Blaine  can- 
didacy to  tie  up  the  nomination  and  permit  the  introduction  of 
McKinley  into  the  breach.  Mr.  Hanna  was  not  a  delegate  to 
the  Convention,  but  he  went  to  Minneapolis  and  opened  an 
unofficial  headquarters  for  McKinley  at  the  West  House. 
For  some  days  he  tried,  not  without  prospects  of  success,  to 


166      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND    WORK 

arrange  combinations,  which  under  certain  possible  contingen- 
cies might  result  in  McKinley's  favor. 

It  was,  however,  a  useless  effort.  McKinley  never  had  a 
chance,  and  he  did  well  not  to  abandon  his  overt  support  of  the 
President  and  his  overt  discouragement  of  his  own  followers. 
Mr.  Harrison  could  not  be  beaten.  Twelve  of  his  friends,  sub- 
sequently named  the  "  Twelve  Apostles,"  conceived  the  idea 
of  collecting  all  the  Harrison  disciples  together  as  a  sort  of  dem- 
onstration in  force,  which  would  constrain  the  weaker  brethren. 
The  meeting  was  held  in  Market  Hall  and  was  attended  by  a 
sufficient  number  of  delegates  to  assure  the  nomination.  Presi- 
dent Harrison  received  535  votes  on  the  first  ballot  and  his 
selection  was  made  unanimous.  The  McKinley  headquar- 
ters at  the  West  House  had  been  closed  some  days  before,  al- 
though this  fact  did  not  prevent  Mr.  Hanna  from  continuing  to 
work  on  behalf  of  his  friend.  As  the  event  proved,  it  was  for- 
tunate that  the  President  was  strong  enough  to  obtain  a  re- 
nomination.  Probably  no  Republican  candidate  could  have 
been  elected  in  1892,  while  at  the  same  time  the  President's 
defeat  resulted  in  making  McKinley  even  more  possible  for 
1896.  He  was  generally  admitted  to  be  the  most  available 
man  for  the  next  nomination.  No  less  than  182  delegates  had 
voted  for  him  as  an  unauthorized  candidate,  which  was  as  many 
as  had  voted  for  Elaine.  He  had  been  hailed  in  the  Conven- 
tion as  the  candidate  for  '96.  The  symptoms  could  scarcely 
be  more  favorable. 

The  Convention  was  no  sooner  over  than  steps  were  taken 
in  the  direction  of  Governor  McKinley 's  nomination  in  1896. 
On  this  point  the  testimony  of  ex-Senator  Charles  Dick  is 
explicit.  He  had  been  a  delegate  to  the  Minneapolis  Conven- 
tion ;  and  (according  to  his  account)  Mr.  Hanna  and  others  of 
the  Republican  leaders  in  Ohio  had  talked  with  him  about 
accepting  the  chairmanship  of  the  State  Committee  in  case 
McKinley  were  nominated.  About  two  weeks  later  the  State 
Committee  met  in  Columbus,  and  selected  Mr.  Dick  as  chair- 
man. As  soon  as  he  was  notified,  he  started  for  Columbus  to 
decline  the  honor.  He  had  agreed  to  accept  it  only  in  case 
some  Ohio  man  were  nominated.  There  he  had  an  interview 
with  Governor  McKinley,  who  urged  him  to  accept  and  insisted 


THE   MAKING   OF   A   PRESIDENT  167 

that  before  reaching  any  negative  decision  he  have  an  inter- 
view with  Mr.  Hanna.  The  result  was  that  he  allowed  him- 
self to  be  persuaded.  They  both  of  them  urged  the  necessity 
of  having  a  trustworthy  McKinley  man  at  the  head  of  the 
State  Committee,  so  that  every  local  campaign  between  1892 
and  1896  could  be  conducted  with  a  view  to  the  nomination 
of  the  Governor  in  1896. 

No  opportunity  was  lost  to  keep  the  candidate  before  the 
public.  During  the  campaign  of  1892  special  efforts  were  made 
to  make  Mr.  McKinley  conspicuous  on  the  stump.  An  unusually 
prolonged  trip  was  arranged  by  Thomas  H.  Carter,  chairman 
of  the  Republican  National  Committee,  after  consultation  with 
Mr.  Hanna.  The  Governor's  route  stretched  as  far  west  as 
Iowa  and  Minnesota,  and  as  far  east  as  Maine,  and  it  included 
all  the  important  intervening  states.  Wherever  he  went  he 
made  a  favorable  impression.  He  was  not  like  William  J. 
Bryan  a  great  popular  orator,  but  he  was  a  persuasive  and 
effective  speaker,  who  could  give  dignity  and  sincerity  to  the 
commonplaces  of  partisan  controversy.  Above  all,  his  amia- 
bility and  his  winning  personal  qualities  never  failed  to  make 
for  him  friends  and  well-wishers. 

The  defeat  of  Benjamin  Harrison  and  the  election  of  Grover 
Cleveland  had,  of  course,  a  profound  although  at  first  a  doubt- 
ful, effect  upon  Mr.  McKinley's  general  standing  as  a  presi- 
dential candidate.  The  campaign  on  his  behalf  would  be  either 
very  much  strengthened  or  very  much  weakened, —  according 
to  the  success  or  failure  of  the  new  President's  administration. 
Mr.  Cleveland  had  been  elected  on  the  tariff  issue.  The  high 
protectionist  legislation  passed  in  1890  continued  to  be  so 
unpopular  that  not  only  did  he  receive  a  larger  majority  in 
the  electoral  college  than  he  had  in  1884,  but  his  party  secured 
the  control  of  both  Houses  of  Congress.  For  the  first  time 
since  the  Civil  War  the  Democrats  were  in  a  position  to  fulfil 
their  preelection  promises.  If  they  could  pass  a  measure  of 
tariff  reform,  which  would  receive  the  approval  of  the  country, 
Mr.  McKinley's  chief  political  stock-in-trade  would  be  very 
much  damaged.  On  the  other  hand  the  failure  of  tariff  re- 
form as  a  practical  economic  and  political  policy  would  make 
him  the  logical  candidate  of  his  own  party. 


168      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS    LIFE    AND    WORK 

The  situation,  however,  as  it  developed,  brought  with  it  an 
additional  complication,  which  was  to  be  as  embarrassing  to 
Mr.  McKinley  in  1896  as  it  was  to  President  Cleveland  in 
1893.  When  the  new  administration  assumed  office  in  the 
March  of  that  year,  not  only  was  the  economic  prosperity  of 
the  country  compromised,  but  the  security  of  its  whole  credit 
system  had  been  gravely  threatened.  The  country  had  en- 
joyed thirteen  or  fourteen  years  of  practically  uninterrupted 
agricultural  and  industrial  expansion.  The  new  states  between 
the  Mississippi  River  and  the  Rocky  Mountains  had  been  settled 
with  unusual  rapidity,  and  with  an  over-confident  assurance 
that  the  prairie  lands  of  the  western  part  of  Kansas  and  Nebraska 
would  be  as  available  for  immediately  profitable  cultivation 
as  had  the  better  watered  lands  farther  east.  The  farmers  had 
gone  heavily  into  debt  for  the  sake  of  improving  their  home- 
steads, and  were  depending  on  a  steady  increase  in  ground 
value,  remunerative  prices  for  grain,  and  a  persistently  abun- 
dant supply  of  loanable  capital  in  order  to  meet  their  obliga- 
tions. 

None  of  these  necessities  was  forthcoming.  The  settlement 
of  this  particular  region  had  been  closely  associated  with  an  un- 
precedented amount  of  railway  construction.  The  new  mileage 
was  built  as  much  for  the  future  as  for  the  present.  It  had 
called  for  an  enormous  amount  of  capital,  upon  which  suffi- 
cient returns  could  not  be  immediately  earned.  It  stimu- 
lated the  settlement  of  new  farms  to  such  an  extent  that  for 
many  years  the  supply  of  agricultural  commodities  tended  to 
exceed  the  world's  demand.  This  whole  section  of  the  country 
needed  time  to  grow  up  to  its  improvements.  Too  much  money 
had  been  borrowed  on  the  strength  of  expectations,  the  realiza- 
tion of  which  would  have  to  be  postponed  much  longer  than  the 
borrowers  anticipated. 

Unfortunately,  however,  just  at  this  juncture  the  security 
of  the  whole  American  financial  system  was  threatened  by  the 
effects  of  the  liberal  purchase  and  coinage  of  silver  by  the  govern- 
ment —  a  policy  which  had  been  favored  by  the  West  under  the 
erroneous  idea  that  the  more  money  issued  by  the  government 
per  capita  the  more  each  farmer  would  have  in  his  pocket.  This 
policy  eventually  caused  that  very  contraction  of  credit  which 


THE   MAKING    OF   A    PRESIDENT  169 

was  needed  in  order  to  compromise  still  more  seriously  the  sit- 
uation of  the  western  borrowers.  It  had  become  doubtful 
whether  the  government  could  maintain  gold  payments  —  in 
the  face  of  the  persistent  exportation  of  gold,  and  the  steady 
drain  on  the  gold  reserve.  At  the  same  time  the  Treasury  was 
embarrassed  by  a  deficit  resulting  from  a  combination  of  in- 
dustrial depression  and  the  Republican  tariff  and  appropri- 
ation acts  of  1890. 

These  different  causes  of  uncertainty  and  depression  began  to 
be  felt  in  full  during  the  early  months  of  President  Cleveland's 
second  term.  By  June  the  country  was  suffering  from  a  full- 
fledged  panic.  Mr.  Cleveland,  who  was  as  much  committed  to 
the  maintenance  of  the  gold  standard  as  he  was  to  tariff  reform, 
called  an  extra  session  of  Congress  to  assemble  early  in  August. 
A  long  and  a  bitter  struggle  took  place,  during  which  the  ad- 
ministration had  to  strain  all  its  resources,  but  the  silver  pur- 
chase act  was  finally  repealed.  Nevertheless  the  business  of 
the  country  did  not  recover.  The  drain  upon  the  gold  reserve 
continued;  and  the  government  was  obliged  repeatedly  to 
sell  bonds  in  order  to  replenish  the  supply. 

The  business  depression  which  accompanied  and  followed 
these  events  was  exceptionally  severe ;  and  it  was  felt  through- 
out the  length  and  breadth  of  the  United  States.  It  did  not 
have  the  usual  effect  of  releasing  money  from  active  business 
and  allowing  debtors  more  easily  to  obtain  loans  on  any  suffi- 
cient security,  because  the  whole  credit  system  had  been  un- 
dermined. The  borrowing  farmers  suffered  severely,  —  often 
to  the  point  of  losing  their  farms.  The  prices  of  commodities 
fell  and  the  cost  of  living  was  low,  but  business  was  so  bad  and  so 
many  men  were  out  of  employment  that  only  a  few  were 
benefited.  The  suffering  was  acute  and  widespread  and  had 
an  immediate  effect  upon  the  political  situation.  The  ad- 
ministration was  made  responsible  for  the  disasters,  which  it 
had  worked  heroically  to  avert.  The  tide  began  to  set  in  favor 
of  Republican  candidates  and  policies. 

These  events,  disastrous  as  they  were  to  the  country,  were 
manifestly  favorable  to  the  candidacy  of  William  McKinley, 
Jr.,  but  just  at  this  crisis  a  misfortune  befell  that  gentleman 
which  threatened  to  ruin  his  political  career.  In  February, 


170      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

1893,  he  became  bankrupt,  as  a  result  of  the  failure  of  a  man 
named  Walker,  of  Youngstown,  Ohio.  He  had  indorsed  some 
paper  for  Mr.  Walker,  who  was  a  friend  of  long  standing,  and 
who  under  Mr.  McKinley 's  encouragement  had  gone  into  the 
business  of  manufacturing  tin  plates.  The  notes  he  had  in- 
dorsed aggregated  over  $100,000,  which  was  a  larger  sum 
than  the  combined  possessions  of  himself  and  wife.  Mr. 
McKinley  was  in  despair  —  and  saw  no  alternative  but  the 
abandonment  of  politics  and  the  devotion  of  the  remainder  of 
his  life  to  the  payment  of  his  obligations. 

In  his  distress  he  went  to  Myron  T.  Herrick  of  Cleveland, 
who  was  a  close  friend.  Mr.  Hanna  was  in  New  York  at  the 
time  attending  to  troubles  of  his  own,  and  could  not  imme- 
diately come  to  his  assistance.  Mr.  Herrick,  with  the  aid  of  H. 
H.  Kohlsaat  of  Chicago  and  Thomas  McDougal  of  Cincinnati, 
raised  a  fund  to  meet  the  first  of  the  maturing  obligations, 
but  as  their  volume  increased  they  found  the  task  beyond  their 
ability.  Soon  after,  Mr.  Hanna  himself  came  to  the  rescue, 
took  the  matter  in  charge,  and  succeeded  in  raising  in  Cleve- 
land and  elsewhere  a  sum  of  money  sufficient  to  meet  all  Mr. 
McKinley's  debts.  Among  the  contributors  to  this  fund  were 
H.  H.  Kohlsaat,  Samuel  Mather,  John  Hay,  Thomas  Mc- 
Dougal, J.  H.  Wade,  James  Pickands,  A.  A.  Pope,  William 
Chisholm,  Charles  Brush,  James  H.  Hoyt,  Charles  Taft, 
Andrew  Carnegie,  H.  C.  Frick,  Philander  Knox,  and  many 
others.  The  list  was  made  up  as  much  of  Mark  Hanna's 
friends  as  it  was  of  William  McKinley's.  The  latter 's  personal 
popularity  was  such  that  a  considerable  sum  was  contributed 
voluntarily  in  small  amounts  by  poor  people. 

The  panic  which  cost  Mr.  McKinley,  his  wife  and  friends 
so  much  money  was  a  blessing  to  his  cause.  It  only  remained 
for  him  and  his  co-workers  to  turn  the  opportunity  to  good 
account  —  which  was  done  in  the  fall  of  1893.  He  had  been 
renominated  for  governor  in  the  spring  of  that  year,  and  in 
November  was  reflected  by  a  majority  of  'no  less  than  80,000. 
The  brilliance  of  this  victory  made  a  profound  impression  on 
the  public  mind.  No  such  majority  had  been  known  in  Ohio 
since  the  war.  Hundreds  of  telegrams  and  letters  of  congratu- 
lation were  showered  on  the  victor,  and  two-thirds  of  them 


THE  MAKING   OF   A   PRESIDENT  171 

welcomed  him  as  the  next  President  of  the  United  States. 
For  the  first  time  he  began  to  be  named,  not  merely  as  an  eligible, 
but  as  the  logical,  candidate.  Two  days  after  the  election  his 
name  was  placed  on  the  editorial  page  of  the  Cleveland  Leader 
as  its  candidate  for  the  nomination.  More  significant  and 
interesting  is  the  fact  that  on  November  18  a  cartoon  was 
published  in  the  same  newspaper,  in  which  Uncle  Sam  was 
pointing  to  the  rising  sun  of  McKinley  in  1896  and  with  it  the 
dawn  of  renewed  prosperity. 

So  far  as  I  know  this  was  the  first  public  advertisement  of 
the  idea  that  the  nomination  and  election  of  McKinley  would 
bring  with  it  a  revival  of  business  activity.  Manifestly  a 
more  popular  slogan  could  not  be  found  in  a  period  of  acute  eco- 
nomic dearth;  and  it  is  significant  that  it  apparently  origi- 
nated in  Cleveland.  Who  was  responsible  for  its  origination 
is  obscure;  but  as  soon  as  it  was  suggested,  Mr.  Hanna  was 
the  man  above  all  others  to  sympathize  with  it  and  under- 
stand its  availability.  The  dominant  object  of  political  policy 
and  action  was  from  his  business  point  of  view  the  encourage- 
ment of  a  steady  and  general  economic  prosperity.  There- 
after a  systematic  attempt  was  made  to  impress  McKinley 
on  the  popular  mind  as  the  " advance  agent  of  prosperity." 

The  " prosperity"  issue  was  made  more  popular,  and  from 
the  point  of  the  Republican  protectionist,  more  pertinent, 
by  the  course  of  business  and  politics  in  1894.  In  that  year 
the  Democratic  leaders  made  an  attempt  to  revise  the  tariff 
in  accordance  with  their  campaign  pledges.  The  attempt  was 
bungled.  The  bill,  as  it  finally  passed,  was  so  unsatisfactory 
to  President  Cleveland  that  he  allowed  it  to  become  a  law 
without  his  signature.  During  a  period  of  economic  dearth 
any  legislation  on  the  tariff  was  likely  to  make  trouble.  It 
emphasized  the  existing  depression  in  several  important  manu- 
facturing industries.  At  the  same  time  it  alienated  public 
sympathy,  because  many  of  its  schedules  were  just  as  plainly 
the  work  of  selfish  special  interests  as  were  those  of  the  McKin- 
ley Bill.  It  was  a  measure  of  tariff  reform  which  contained  very 
little  reform ;  and  what  was  as  bad  it  was  a  tariff  for  revenue 
only,  which  failed  as  a  revenue  law.  The  income  tax,  which 
was  to  provide  the  revenue  needed  under  a  tariff  for  revenue 


172      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

only,  was  declared  unconstitutional.  A  heavy  deficit  was 
fastened  on  the  Treasury  at  the  very  time  when  the  gold  re- 
serve was  being  depleted  by  financial  uncertainty.  In  every 
respect  the  Wilson  Bill  proved  to  be  a  failure,  and  really  or 
apparently  increased  and  prolonged  the  prevailing  business 
depression. 

The  effect  of  the  Wilson  Bill  in  contributing  to  the  economic 
privations  of  the  American  people  was  very  much  exaggerated  ; 
but  the  Republican  leaders,  and  particularly  the  friends 
of  Mr.  McKinley,  can  hardly  be  blamed  for  taking  what  ad- 
vantage they  could  of  the  Democratic  failure.  They  had  al- 
ways claimed  that  tariff  reform  would  injuriously  affect  Ameri- 
can business ;  and  behold  !  here  was  their  prophecy  fulfilled. 
Throughout  1894  general  business  continued  to  be  prostrate. 
The  voters  attributed  their  privations  to  the  party  in  power, 
and  returned  an  enormous  Republican  majority  to  the  House 
of  Representatives  in  the  fall  of  1894. 

If  Messrs.  McKinley  and  Hanna  had  been  able  to  write 
history  for  the  benefit  of  the  McKinley  cause,  they  could  not 
have  improved  upon  the  actual  course  of  events.  The  fail- 
ure of  the  Wilson  Bill  clinched  every  argument  which  could  be 
made  in  favor  of  the  candidate  from  Ohio.  Protectionism  was 
apparently  vindicated.  The  McKinley  Bill  had  ceased  to  be 
odious.  Its  author  could  claim  a  revision  of  the  earlier  adverse 
popular  judgment.  He  could  more  plausibly  than  ever  assert 
that  his  nomination  and  election  would  restore  prosperity,  be- 
cause its  return  was  contingent  upon  a  new  application  of  the 
doctrine  of  high  protection.  Needless  to  say  that  these  argu- 
ments were  reiterated,  emphasized  and  spread  broadcast  over 
the  country.  The  Cleveland  Leader,  which  was  the  most 
sedulous  advocate  of  McKinley's  nomination  along  the  fore- 
going lines,  was  widely  circulated  for  a  period  of  over  eighteen 
months  at  Mr.  Hanna's  personal  expense. 

Mark  Hanna  at  that  time  had  no  inkling  of  the  decisive 
effect  which  the  increasing  importance  of  the  " prosperity" 
issue  and  its  association  with  the  McKinley  candidacy  would 
have  upon  his  own  subsequent  political  career.  But  if  he  had 
needed  any  further  stimulus  to  exert  all  his  energies  in  favor 
of  the  nomination  of  his  friend,  the  shape  which  political  and 


THE   MAKING   OF  A   PRESIDENT  173 

business  issues  assumed  would  have  supplied  it.  He  was  work- 
ing both  on  behalf  of  the  political  leader,  in  whom  he  most  be- 
lieved, and  on  behalf  of  the  idea,  embodied  in  his  own  life.  For 
a  man  of  his  experience  and  outlook  there  could  be  no  higher 
object  of  political  leadership  than  the  increased  happiness 
which  the  American  people  would  obtain  from  a  revival  of  ac- 
tive business  and  remunerative  employment.  Mr.  Hanna 
sincerely  believed  that  the  nomination  and  election  of  his  friend 
constituted  the  best  means  of  restoring  to  American  busi- 
ness its  normal  condition  of  prosperous  expansion  and  to  the 
American  people  their  customary  amount  of  personal  economic 
satisfaction. 

The  possibility  that  he  might  by  the  same  act  fulfil  his  most 
cherished  personal  ambition,  make  his  best  friend  President 
of  the  United  States,  and  contribute  most  effectually  to  the  wel- 
fare of  his  fellow-countrymen  was  so  alluring  to  Mr.  Hanna 
that  it  called  for  some  sacrifice.  For  fourteen  years  he  had  been 
a  business  man  with  incidental  political  interests.  Now  that 
business  prosperity  itself  was  dependent  in  his  opinion  on  the 
political  triumph  of  his  party,  and  the  work  of  nominating  his 
friend  was  reaching  a  critical  phase,  Mr.  Hanna  decided  to  be- 
come a  politician  with  incidental  business  interests.  He  de- 
cided to  sacrifice  his  own  business  career  and  his  chance  of  greater 
personal  wealth  to  the  opportunities  and  responsibilities  of  an 
increasing  participation  in  politics. 

In  the  fall  of  1894  (after  the  Republican  victory  in  the  con- 
gressional elections)  Mark  Hanna  went  to  his  brother,  Mr. 
Leonard  Hanna,  and  declared  that  he  proposed  to  withdraw 
from  active  and  responsible  direction  of  the  business  of  M.  A. 
Hanna  &  Co.  He  would,  of  course,  always  be  ready  to  give 
his  advice,  and  when  in  Cleveland  to  lend  his  cooperation; 
and  he  would  retain  a  substantial  interest  in  the  partnership. 
But  he  did  not  wish  to  be  tied  down  any  longer  to  the  routine 
of  office  work.  He  proposed  to  get  some  amusement  out  of 
what  remained  of  his  life,  to  go  away  when  he  wanted,  and  to  do 
what  he  wanted.  He  offered  to  his  brother  as  compensation 
ior  assuming  the  additional  responsibility  and  work  a  part  of 
his  own  interest  in  the  profits  of  the  firm ;  and  this  offer  was  far 
more  liberal  than  Leonard  Hanna  himself  believed  to  be  justi- 


174      MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

fied  by  the  transfer  of  work.  In  January,  1895,  Mark  Hanna 
was  as  good  as  his  word.  He  ceased,  thereafter,  to  do  more 
than  exercise  an  indirect  supervision  over  the  business  whose 
expansion  had  been  for  almost  twenty-eight  years  his  domi- 
nant preoccupation. 

Mr.  Hanna  never  intimated  in  his  conversation  with  Mr. 
Leonard  Hanna  that  he  was  retiring  for  the  purpose  of  giving 
his  time  and  attention  to  the  nomination  of  McKinley.  But 
such  was  the  fact.  He  had  come  to  the  parting  of  the  ways. 
Politics  had  become  more  absorbing  than  business.  He  de- 
cided to  make  his  political  ambition  the  salient  one  in  his  life. 
The  work  of  nominating  McKinley  was  reaching  its  final  and 
critical  stage.  It  required  the  better  part  of  his  time  and  at- 
tention. Nothing  else  should  be  allowed  to  stand  in  its  way. 

That  he  realized,  when  he  took  this  step,  the  consequences 
to  himself  of  McKinley's  nomination,  there  is  no  reason  to 
believe.  He  was  not  a  calculating  man  in  respect  to  his  own 
deeper  interests.  It  was  enough  that  the  task  of  bringing  about 
McKinley's  nomination  demanded  almost  undivided  attention, 
that  he  saw  a  good  chance  of  success  and  that  in  the  distance 
there  loomed  vaguely  an  attractive  probability  of  increased 
personal  power  and  influence.  His  past  life  did  nothing  to 
prophecy  that  after  McKinley's  election  he  could  occupy  any 
political  position  but  that  of  confidential  adviser  and  political 
manager  to  the  President.  Not  even  his  closest  friends  sus- 
pected at  this  time  the  strength  of  will,  the  flexibility  of  talent, 
the  undeveloped  power  of  personal  popularity  and  the  rare  ex- 
ecutive abilities,  which  enabled  him  subsequently  to  grow  up  to 
one  opportunity  of  power  after  another. 

Before  Mr.  Hanna  withdrew  from  active  business  he  had 
not  pretended  to  keep  his  hands  on  all  the  details  of  the 
McKinley  campaign.  To  a  large  extent  the  candidate  had 
been  his  own  general  manager.  No  account  of  the  promotion 
of  his  candidacy  would  be  correct  which  understated  the  es- 
sential part  played  by  Mr.  McKinley  himself.  He  had  many 
friends  and  acquaintances  among  the  Republican  leaders  in 
all  parts  of  the  Union,  and  he,  himself,  had  established  certain 
alliances  which  were  of  the  utmost  value  to  his  personal  cause. 
No  important  step  was  taken  without  consulting  him,  and  his 


THE   MAKING   OF   A   PRESIDENT  175 

counsel  and  cooperation  were  indispensable  to  the  success  of 
the  enterprise.  But  there  are  limits  which  a  candidate  cannot 
exceed  in  working  on  behalf  of  his  own  nomination.  Above 
all,  his  own  personal  participation  in  the  canvass  cannot  be- 
come too  conspicuous.  His  most  effective  assistants,  Mr.  Hanna 
apart,  were  Major  Charles  Dick,  the  Chairman  of  the  State 
Committee,  and  Mr.  Joseph  P.  Smith,  State  Librarian  of  Ohio. 
These  two  gentlemen,  and  particularly  the  former,  had  been 
sent  on  missions  all  over  the  country,  but  chiefly  in  the  South, 
preparing  against  the  time  when  the  work  of  actually  electing 
the  delegates  must  begin. 

Mr.  Hanna's  first  step  after  retiring  from  business  was  to 
rent  a  house  in  Thomasville,  Georgia,  for  five  years.  He  had 
never  liked  the  northern  winters,  and  if  he  were  going  to  devote 
the  rest  of  his  life  (as  he  told  his  brother)  to  the  enjoyment  of 
a  good  time,  what  better  way  of  doing  it  than  that  of  living 
during  the  cold  weather  in  the  sunshine  of  the  South.  There, 
somewhat  later,  he  was  joined  by  his  friend  Governor  McKinley, 
for  Mark  Hanna  was  a  sociable  man,  and  he  could  not  enjoy 
a  really  good  time  unless  he  were  surrounded  by  good  company. 
The  Governor  appeared  to  be  very  good  company.  The  house 
party  was  marred  by  an  illness  of  the  honored  guest,  which 
blocked  in  part  a  proposed  excursion  to  Florida ;  but  when  it 
was  over  every  one  agreed  that  the  host  and  his  guests  had  been 
benefited  and  entertained  by  the  visit. 

A  part  of  the  entertainment  prepared  by  Mr.  Hanna  for  his 
guest  and  himself  consisted  in  inviting  a  great  deal  of  company 
to  meet  the  Governor.  Day  after  day  the  two  friends  sat  in 
the  sun  parlor  and  received  these  visitors.  They  did  not  come 
merely  from  the  vicinity  of  Thomasville.  Gentlemen  from  all 
over  the  South  flocked  to  Mr.  Hanna's  house,  in  order  to  have 
a  little  chat  with  the  Governor  and  his  friend.  As  befitted 
good  Republicans,  no  color  line  was  drawn.  Negroes  as  well 
as  white  men  were  introduced  to  the  amiable  Mr.  McKinley; 
and  when  they  departed  they  had  all  been  most  favorably  im- 
pressed by  his  winning  personality.  The  Governor  showed  his 
appreciation  of  the  efforts  which  his  host  was  making  to  en- 
tertain him  by  being  unusually  courteous  and  affable.  Mr. 
Melville  Hanna,  who  also  had  a  house  in  Thomasville  and  who 


176      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

was  present  at  some  of  these  interviews,  was  very  much  im- 
pressed by  the  tact  with  which  the  host  treated  his  stream  of 
guests,  the  engaging  candor  with  which  he  talked  to  them 
and  the  favorable  impression  made  on  them  by  Governor 
McKinley. 

In  spite  of  Mr.  McKinley 's  illness  the  house  party  was  a 
great  success.  The  host  had  a  particularly  good  time.  When 
it  was  all  over  he  could  reasonably  count  upon  having  obtained 
for  the  benefit  of  his  guest  a  considerable  majority  of  the  South- 
ern delegates  to  the  Republican  Convention  of  1896.  The 
Republican  politicians  of  the  South  had  been  converted  to 
McKinley,  and  the  foundation  of  a  pro-McKinley  organiza- 
tion laid.  The  work  was  so  well  done,  that  although  frantic 
efforts  were  subsequently  made  by  able  and  unscrupulous 
Northern  politicians  to  stem  the  tide  in  favor  of  McKinley 
in  the  South,  they  had  small  success.  Mr.  Hanna  and  Mr. 
McKinley  had  put  a  correct  estimate  on  the  situation  in  that 
part  of  the  country.  They  had  nothing  to  offer  in  return  for 
the  delegates  that  could  not  be  offered  on  behalf  of  another 
candidate  —  viz.  the  Federal  offices  in  the  event  of  success  — 
but  they  divined  that  personal  attention  means  much  to  South- 
erners; and  they  had  used  most  effectively  the  knowledge. 
By  making  McKinley's  personality  familiar  to  Southern  Re- 
publicans and  popular  among  them,  they  created  a  species  of 
public  opinion  in  the  South  favorable  to  his  candidacy.  It 
was  a  brilliant  piece  of  tactics,  which  would  only  have  occurred 
to  a  man  of  sound  and  kindly  human  feelings. 

During  the  spring  of  1895,  the  McKinley  campaign  met  with 
a  discouraging  set-back.  At  the  State  Convention  held  late 
in  May  at  Zanesville,  Mr  Hanna  and  his  friends  lost  control  of 
the  state  organization.  There  were  three  candidates  for  gov- 
ernor, James  H.  Hoyt,  Samuel  K.  Nash  and  Asa  Bushnell. 
The  pro-McKinley  strength  was  divided  between  Mr.  Hoyt, 
the  Cleveland  candidate,  and  Mr.  Nash.  A  combination  com- 
posed of  Mr.  Foraker,  George  B.  Cox  and  A.  L.  Conger  suc- 
ceeded in  nominating  Asa  Bushnell.  Foraker  was  indorsed 
for  the  next  senatorship  —  a  course  for  which  there  was  no 
precedent  in  Ohio.  An  associate  of  Mr.  Foraker,  formerly 
his  private  secretary,  Charles  L.  Kurtz,  was  made  chairman 


THE   MAKING   OF  A   PRESIDENT  177 

of  the  State  Committee,  and  his  predecessor,  Mr.  Dick,  was 
denied  a  coveted  nomination  for  State  Auditor.  It  is  true  that 
an  open  breach  was  avoided  by  the  indorsement  of  McKinley 
as  a  presidential  candidate;  but  the  McKinleyites  were  far 
from  satisfied  with  their  share  of  the  spoils.  The  outcome  was 
generally  interpreted  as  a  victory  for  Mr.  Foraker;  and  Mr. 
McKinley's  opponents  in  other  states  used  it  to  cast  a  doubt 
upon  McKinley's  ability  to  go  to  the  Convention  with  the 
united  support  of  his  own  state.  In  the  end  the  consequences 
of  the  defeat  were,  however,  much  more  serious  to  Mr. 
Hanna  than  they  were  to  Mr.  McKinley. 

Up  to  this  time  the  headquarters  of  the  McKinley  organiza- 
tion had  been  situated  in  Columbus.  After  the  State  Conven- 
tion it  was  moved  to  Mr.  Hanna's  own  office  in  the  Perry- 
Payne  Building.  For  the  first  time  he  himself  took  charge  of 
all  the  details,  and  his  chief  assistant,  besides  those  already 
named,  was  the  Attorney  General  of  the  state,  J.  K.  Richards. 
Mr.  J.  P.  Smith  helped  with  the  office  work,  while  Major 
Dick  was  kept  chiefly  on  the  road.  But,  of  course,  the  summer 
continued  to  be  a  time  of  preliminary  preparation.  The  Gov- 
ernor made  several  visits  to  Cleveland  and  while  there  was  al- 
ways a  guest  at  Mr.  Hanna's  house.  The  same  tactics  were 
employed  as  those  which  had  proved  to  be  so  successful  during 
the  previous  winter  at  Thomasville.  Many  prominent  Repub- 
licans were  invited  to  meet  McKinley  under  the  hospitable 
roof  of  his  friend;  and  it  was  rare  that  the  candidate  failed  to 
captivate  his  visitors.  In  the  meantime  general  conditions 
continued  to  be  favorable.  There  was  no  revival  of  business 
to  diminish  the  value  of  the  wares  offered  by  the  "  advance 
agent  of  prosperity, "  and  straw  votes  taken  in  many  different 
states  indicated  a  strong  tide  of  popular  sentiment  in  McKinley's 
favor. 

Not  until  late  in  the  fall  of  1895  did  Messrs.  McKinley  and 
Hanna  learn  the  character  and  the  extent  of  the  opposition 
which  they  would  be  obliged  finally  to  overcome.  This  oppo- 
sition was  not  dangerous,  because  of  the  popularity  of  any  al- 
ternative candidate.  The  only  other  candidates  who  had  any 
claim  on  the  nomination  were  Thomas  B.  Reed  and  ex-Presi- 
dent Harrison.  Of  these  Mr.  Reed's  strength  was  confined  to 

N 


178      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

New  England,  and  Mr.  Harrison's,  such  as  it  was,  to  his  own 
state.  But  although  there  were  no  popular  centres  of  resist- 
ance, it  was  hardly  to  be  expected  that  the  McKinley  bark 
would  be  allowed  to  sail  unopposed  into  harbor.  The  Republi- 
can nominee  seemed  to  be  certain  of  election,  and  it  would  not 
do  to  allow  him  to  capture  the  Convention  without  any  salu- 
tation of  his  political  masters.  Certain  leading  " bosses" 
and  politicians  began  to  ask  what  there  was  in  this  situation 
for  them.  Before  submitting  to  McKinley's  nomination  could 
they  not  make  good  terms  for  themselves  ? 

There  is  not,  nor  could  there  be,  any  written  evidence  of  the 
negotiations  which  followed  between  these  "bosses"  and 
Messrs.  McKinley  and  Hanna.  But  the  following  account  of 
the  matter  is  not  far  from  the  truth.  The  latter  were  informed 
that  the  delegations  from  certain  states  could  be  obtained  on 
certain  terms,  and  late  in  the  fall  Mr.  Hanna  went  East  in 
order  to  find  out  what  these  terms  were.  Whatever  they 
were  they  probably  included  one  or  two  cabinet  positions.  Mr. 
Hanna  returned,  made  his  report,  and  seems  to  have  urged  the 
acceptance  of  the  terms.  It  meant  the  removal  of  the  only 
important  obstacle  to  McKinley 's  nomination,  and  he  could 
not  resist  the  temptation.  But  McKinley  himself  absolutely 
refused  to  consent  to  any  such  bargain.  He  was  much  more 
alive  than  was  Mr.  Hanna  to  the  grave  objections  to  pur- 
chase of  the  presidential  nomination  by  the  payment  of  cabi- 
net positions.  He  declared  that  he  would  rather  lose  the  nomi- 
nation than  obtain  it  by  such  dubious  means.  Mr.  Hanna  at 
once  admitted  that  his  friend  was  right,  and  the  uncompromis- 
ing stand  which  Mr.  McKinley  had  taken  in  the  matter 
greatly  increased  his  personal  admiration  of  the  man. 

The  decision  was  reached  that  in  case  they  had  to  face  the 
opposition  of  the  local  political  leaders,  the  fight  would  be  made 
upon  the  issue  that  the  "bosses"  were  opposing  the  people's 
choice.  Eventually  the  contest  assumed  precisely  that  shape. 
On  January  7  there  was  a  conference  in  New  York  between 
Thomas  C.  Platt,  Senator  Quay,  Joseph  H.  Manley,  Chaun- 
cey  I.  Filley  and  James  S.  Clarkson  to  devise  means  for  pre- 
venting the  nomination  of  McKinley.  The  plan  was  adopted 
of  trying  to  keep  the  delegates  away  from  McKinley  by  en- 


THE    MAKING   OF   A   PRESIDENT  179 

couraging  the  growth  of  "favorite  sons"  in  all  the  Northern 
states.  At  the  same  time  the  experienced  politicians  who 
attended  the  conference  decided  to  put  up  a  stiff  fight  for  the 
control  of  the  Southern  local  and  state  conventions.  They  did 
not  realize  how  thoroughly  the  preliminary  work  among  the 
Southern  Republicans  on  McKinley's  behalf  had  already  been 
accomplished.  They  expected  to  be  able  to  capture  a  much 
larger  percentage  of  the  delegates  than  they  actually  suc- 
ceeded in  doing. 

At  the  time  when  it  was  formed,  the  plan  of  campaign  looked 
much  more  promising  than  it  subsequently  proved  to  be.  The 
candidacy  of  Thomas  B.  Reed  would  hold  New  England. 
Thomas  C.  Platt  could  deliver  the  delegation  from  New  York 
to  anybody  he  pleased,  and  he  selected  Levi  P.  Morton  as  an 
inspiring  candidate.  Senator  Quay  considered  the  transfer  of 
his  contingent  to  Reed,  but  finally  decided  that  he  himself  was 
the  favorite  son  of  Pennsylvania.  Iowa  claimed  the  nomina- 
tion for  Senator  Allison.  Besides  these  candidates,  all  of  whom 
survived  until  the  meeting  of  the  National  Convention,  there 
were  indications  that  Indiana  might  be  kept  true  to  ex-Presi- 
dent Harrison,  Illinois  to  Senator  Cullom  and  Minnesota  to 
Senator  Davis.  The  expectation  was  that  in  case  the  tide  in 
favor  of  McKinley  could  be  checked,  other  "favorite  sons" 
would  appear  to  take  advantage  of  the  vicissitudes  of  a  divided 
Convention. 

At  this  critical  stage  in  the  canvass,  everything  depended  on 
the  ability  of  Mr.  McKinley  and  his  friends  to  keep  alive  an 
impression  of  the  irresistibility  of  his  candidacy.  A  majority  of 
the  Republican  voters  favored  his  nomination,  but  their  pref- 
erence might  be  defeated  —  in  case  the  local  politicians  came 
to  believe  that  its  defeat  was  probable  or  even  possible.  On  the 
other  hand,  many  of  these  politicians,  not  publicly  committed 
to  another  candidate,  would  make  haste  to  join  the  procession 
as  soon  as  they  realized  that  it  was  really  made  up  of  the  Elect. 
It  was  a  case  where  nothing  would  succeed  like  success. 

Preparations  were  made  immediately  to  establish  pro- 
McKinley  organizations  in  every  state  which  was  worth  fight- 
ing for.  In  many  important  states  confidential  relations 
had  already  been  established  with  political  leaders  of  promi- 


180      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

nence  who  could  be  trusted  to  work  for  McKinley.  In  New 
Jersey  the  cooperation  of  Garret  A.  Hobart,  subsequently  Vice- 
President,  was  assured.  In  Maryland  Senator  Wellington  could 
be  counted  upon  for  good  work.  In  Michigan  General  Alger 
was  a  friend  of  both  the  candidate  and  Mr.  Hanna.  In  Min- 
nesota ex-Governor  W.  R.  Merriam  was  an  effective  ally.  In 
Wisconsin  Henry  C.  Payne  eventually  helped  to  capture  the 
state  for  McKinley.  West  of  the  Mississippi,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  Iowa  and  one  or  two  other  states,  the  McKinley 
sentiment  was  everywhere  dominant.  In  all  these  localities 
the  work  was  comparatively  easy,  and  did  not  require  very  much 
time  or  cause  much  anxiety. 

In  no  part  of  the  country  did  the  contest  become  fiercer  than 
south  of  the  Mason  and  Dixon  line.  Mr.  Hanna  had  to  fight 
very  hard  to  prevent  the  McKinley  organization  in  several  im- 
portant Southern  states  from  being  broken  up.  The  most  per- 
plexing and  troublesome  crises  occurred  in  Georgia,  Alabama, 
Louisiana  and  Texas.  The  opposition  was  unscrupulous  and 
was  abundantly  supplied  with  funds.  It  used  all  the  tricks 
known  to  machine  politicians,  such  as  the  calling  of  "snap" 
conventions  in  certain  congressional  districts.  But  the  net 
results  of  a  fight  put  by  four  of  the  ablest  and  most  experienced 
politicians  in  the  Republican  party  was  comparatively  small. 
There  were  finally  secured  for  Reed  two  votes  in  Alabama, 
two  in  Georgia,  four  in  Louisiana,  two  and  a  half  in  North  Caro- 
lina, one  in  Virginia  and  five  in  Texas.  Mr.  Platt  picked  up  for 
Morton  one  delegate  from  Alabama  and  two  from  Florida. 
Quay  captured  two  in  Georgia,  one  in  Mississippi,  and  divided 
one  in  Louisiana  with  Allison.  Mr.  Clarkson,  who  had  dispensed 
patronage  during  President  Harrison's  administration,  obtained 
only  three  votes  from  Texas  for  the  lowan  candidate.  These 
were  small  pickings,  considering  the  eminence  of  these  gentle- 
men as  the  gatherers  of  political  fruit.  They  had  been  beaten 
at  their  own  game.  As  Mr.  Thomas  C.  Platt,  in  his  "  Autobi- 
ography "  (p.  331)  says :  "He  (Mr.  Hanna)  had  the  South  prac- 
tically solid  before  some  of  us  waked  up."  But  it  was  not  simply 
a  matter  of  organization.  A  genuine  preference  for  McKinley 
had  been  created  among  the  Southern  Republicans;  and,  of 
course,  he  was  helped  in  the  South  by  his  success  in  the  North, 


THE    MAKING   OF   A    PRESIDENT  181 

Different  methods  were  used  in  different  doubtful  Northern 
states.  Indiana  was  one  of  the  first  among  the  waverers 
which  it  was  possible  to  line  up  SOT  McKinley.  On  February 
4  ex-President  Harrison  announced  that  he  was  not  a  candi- 
date. Mr.  McKinley  had  some  days  before  received  confiden- 
tial information  of  the  announcement,  and  an  emissary,  Charles 
Dick,  was  despatched  to  Indiana  to  take  immediate  ad- 
vantage of  the  withdrawal.  He  had  a  long  secret  interview 
with  John  K.  Gowdy,  chairman  of  the  State  Committee,  which 
resulted  in  an  understanding  that  the  latter  would  work  for 
Mr.  McKinley.  Before  Mr.  Dick  returned  the  situation  all  over 
the  state  was  thoroughly  canvassed,  and  many  consultations  were 
held  with  local  leaders,  whose  cooperation  was  necessary.  Owing 
partly  to  the  efficiency  of  Mr.  Gowdy's  work,  and  partly  to  the 
pro-McKinley  popular  sentiment,  which  was  unusually  strong 
in  Indiana,  the  delegation  from  that  state  was  obtained  for 
McKinley. 

Nebraska  was  another  state  in  which  a  special  situation  con- 
fronted the  McKinley  managers.  A  somewhat  feeble  local 
movement  had  been  started  in  favor  of  General  Manderson  as 
a  "favorite  son,"  which  commanded  the  support  of  most  of 
the  local  politicians.  A  special  organization  had,  consequently, 
to  be  formed,  which  succeeded  in  having  the  delegates-at-large 
instructed  for  McKinley,  in  spite  of  the  opposition  of  Sen- 
ator Thurston.  In  California,  almost  the  only  other  Western 
state  which  required  special  exertions,  the  McKinley  interest 
was  confided  to  Judge  James  A.  Waymire  and  Mr.  J.  C.  Spear ; 
and  they  succeeded  in  bringing  the  state  into  line.  When  the 
Convention  was  finally  held  Mr.  McKinley  was  supported  by 
the  delegations  of  all  the  states  west  of  the  Mississippi,  except 
Iowa,  the  three  votes  from  Utah  and  those  of  the  seceding 
states. 

Opinions  were  divided  among  the  McKinley  managers 
whether  any  contest  at  all  should  be  made  in  those  Northern 
states,  which  were  completely  dominated  by  the  local  "bosses." 
But  Mr.  Hanna  had  the  courage  of  his  cause ;  he  insisted  on 
fighting  all  along  the  line  and  in  capturing  local  delegates  wher- 
ever they  could.  Prominent  Republicans  both  in  New  York 
and  Pennsylvania  were  friendly  to  McKinley  —  far  more  so 


182      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

than  the  votes  of  those  states  subsequently  indicated.  Even 
as  it  was,  eight  votes  were  secured  in  Pennsylvania  and  seventeen 
in  New  York.  A  great  deal  of  very  effective  work  was  also  ac- 
complished in  quietly  favoring  the  election  of  delegates  whose 
second  choice  would  be  McKinley.  Mr.  Hanna  himself  was 
far  from  objecting  to  the  tactics  pursued  by  their  opponents. 
Thomas  B.  Reed  was  the  only  candidate  he  really  feared,  just 
as  it  was  the  only  candidacy  which  was  based  upon  genuine 
claims  to  recognition.  If  the  opposition  could  have  concen- 
trated on  Reed,  it  might  have  become  formidable.  As  it  was, 
the  " favorite  son"  policy  was  a  confession  of  weakness,  which 
could  offer  no  effective  resistance  to  a  candidacy  like  that  of 
McKinley,  which  gathered  volume  as  it  rolled  along. 

Arrangements  had  been  made  to  hold  the  Ohio  State  Conven- 
tion in  March,  so  as  to  place  Mr.  McKinley  formally  in  nomi- 
nation early  in  the  final  contest.  It  assembled  on  March  11  and 
was  a  most  harmonious  gathering — although  the  Foraker  faction 
kept  control  of  the  state  organization.  James  B.  Foraker  made 
the  first  of  a  long  series  of  speeches  nominating  his  former  rival 
for  the  presidency.  The  delegates-at-large  were  divided  be- 
tween the  two  factions,  and  consisted  of  Mr.  Foraker,  Governor 
Bushnell,  General  Charles  Grosvenor,  and  Mark  Hanna.  The 
platform  emphasized  the  importance  of  protectionist  legislation 
as  essential  to  the  revival  of  prosperity,  but  dodged  the  currency 
issue.  It  declared  for  sound  money  and  the  use  of  both  metals, 
which  were  to  be  kept  at  a  parity  by  international  agreement  or 
any  other  available  means.  In  case  a  declaration  in  favor  of  a 
gold  standard  had  been  made  at  this  time,  the  difficulties  of  the 
McKinley  managers  west  of  the  Mississippi  would  have  been 
very  much  increased.  As  it  was,  one  State  Convention  after 
another  began  to  instruct  for  McKinley.  On  March  19 
Wisconsin  was  definitely  placed  on  his  list.  On  April  11  it 
was  joined  by  Oregon.  Four  days  later  Nebraska  and  North 
Dakota  fell  into  line,  and  on  April  29  Vermont,  under  the 
leadership  of  Senator  Proctor,  showed  that  Mr.  Reed  could  even 
hold  all  of  the  delegates  from  New  England. 

All  this  was  encouraging,  and  together  with  the  successes 
in  the  South  it  was  almost  convincing.  But  it  was  not  entirely 
so.  The  McKinley  candidacy  needed  the  testimony  of  an  em- 


THE   MAKING   OF   A   PRESIDENT  183 

phatic  success  in  an  important  contested  state.  Illinois  was 
selected  both  as  a  good  point  of  resistance  by  the  opponents  of 
McKinley,  and  the  best  point  of  attack  by  his  friends.  The 
critical  contest  of  the  campaign  occurred  in  that  state.  The 
local  politicians,  particularly  in  and  about  Chicago,  had  been 
pushing  the  candidacy  of  Senator  Cullom.  No  basing-point 
for  a  McKinley  organization  could  be  found  in  the  regular 
machine,  and  it  was  necessary  to  secure  an  independent  leader, 
who  would  pull  together  the  widespread  sentiment  in  favor 
of  McKinley.  Such  a  leader  was  found  in  Mr.  Charles  G. 
Dawes,  the  son  of  General  R,  Dawes,  once  a  Congressman 
from  an  Ohio  district.  Mr.  Dawes,  after  interviews  with  both 
Mr.  McKinley  and  Mr.  Hanna,  agreed  to  make  the  fight,  and 
he  was  supported  vigorously  by  Mr.  Hanna  himself.  It  was 
generally  understood  that  while  McKinley  might  be  nominated 
without  Illinois,  the  capture  of  that  state  would  remove  any 
possible  doubt  as  to  his  triumph.  Mr.  McKinley  himself  went 
to  Chicago  in  February  and  delivered  a  speech  at  the  Marquette 
Club,  which  helped  his  candidacy.  Mr.  Dawes  proved  to  be 
a  capable  organizer.  The  results  of  the  district  conventions 
were  favorable ;  but  when  the  State  Convention  assembled  late 
in  April,  the  issue  was  still  in  doubt.  A  sharp  struggle  took 
place  with  the  result  dubious  to  the  last.  The  margin  was  so 
narrow  that  an  accident  might  tip  the  scales  one  way  or  the 
other.  The  fight  continued  for  several  days,  on  the  last  of 
which  Mr.  Hanna  sat  in  his  office  in  the  Perry-Payne  Building, 
telephone  in  hand,  from  noon  until  10  P.M.  He  did  not  quit 
until  he  had  learned  that  Senator  Cullom  had  withdrawn  and 
the  delegates-at-large  had  been  instructed  for  McKinley.  He 
could  go  home  assured  that  the  project  conceived  eight  years 
earlier  for  the  nomination  of  his  friend  had  been  successfully 
accomplished. 

Almost  the  whole  cost  of  the  campaign  for  Mr.  McKinley 's 
nomination  was  paid  by  Mr.  Hanna.  Apparently  he  expected 
in  the  beginning  to  obtain  very  much  more  assistance  than  that 
which  he  actually  received.  Early  in  1896,  when  the  demands 
upon  him  became  very  heavy,  he  cast  about  for  some  means  of 
shifting  the  burden.  He  seriously  considered  the  possibility 
of  collecting  a  campaign  fund,  and  had  actually  made  prepara- 


184      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

tions  to  do  so.  But  further  reflection  convinced  him  that  to 
collect  a  fund  for  the  purpose  of  nominating  a  candidate  was 
a  different  thing  from  collecting  an  election  fund.  The  appeal 
in  the  former  case  had  to  be  made  on  personal  rather  than  party 
grounds.  So  he  made  up  his  mind  to  pay  the  expenses  himself. 
He  did  receive  some  help  from  Mr.  McKinley's  personal  friends 
in  Ohio  and  elsewhere,  but  its  amount  was  small  compared 
to  the  total  expenses.  First  and  last  Mr.  Hanna  contributed 
something  over  $100,000  toward  the  expense  of  the  canvass. 

One  hundred  thousand  dollars  and  over  is  a  good  deal  of 
money;  but  it  is  not  too  much  for  the  legitimate  expenses  of 
nominating  a  man  for  President  under  the  convention  system. 
Such  a  sum  would  not  have  gone  very  far  in  case  corrupt 
methods  had  been  used.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  corrupt  methods 
were  always  expressly  and  absolutely  forbidden  by  Mr.  Hanna. 
Certain  of  his  lieutenants,  particularly  in  the  South,  would 
have  been  glad  enough  to  have  plenty  of  money  to  spend,  but 
they  did  not  get  it.  He  was  continually  checking  their  zeal 
and  refusing  or  pairing  down  their  applications  for  funds.  He 
carefully  limited  the  purposes  for  which  alone  the  money  was 
to  be  spent.  It  was  to  pay  the  legitimate  expenses  of  his  as- 
sistants in  organizing  districts  for  McKinley  in  which  a  senti- 
ment favorable  to  the  candidacy  existed.  He  expressly  warns 
them  against  any  attempt  to  obtain  merely  purchasable  votes. 

A  few  quotations  will  illustrate  the  kind  of  letters  which  he 
wrote  to  assistants,  who  were  more  preoccupied  with  the  money 
they  wanted  to  spend  than  they  were  scrupulous  about  the 
methods  they  used  in  spending  it.  On  Nov.  5,  1895,  he  wrote 
to  a  correspondent  in  California:  "I  am  in  receipt  of  your  favor 
of  the  28th  ult.,  and  your  draft  for  $500,  which  came  to  hand 
to-day,  has  been  paid.  The  Governor's  friends  have  not  been 
called  upon  to  contribute  any  money  to  his  campaign,  because 
he  is  very  much  averse  to  that  method.  Of  course  I  appreciate 
that  it  will  be  necessary  to  do  something  towards  the  actual 
expenses  of  those  who  are  willing  to  give  time  to  his  service,  and 
that  I  am  perfectly  willing  to  do,  but  the  use  of  money  to  in- 
fluence votes  is  not  a  method  that  I  favor  at  all.  This  cam- 
paign must  not  be  one  in  which  money  is  used  for  other  than 
necessary  expenses." 


THE    MAKING    OF   A    PRESIDENT  185 

His  letters  to  his  lieutenants  in  the  South  all  run  to  the  same 
effect.  During  February  and  March,  1896,  when  the  combina- 
tion against  McKinley  was  using  every  device  of  the  political 
professional  to  snatch  the  delegates  away  from  McKinley,  Mr. 
Hanna  was  overwhelmed  with  demands  for  money  from  his 
assistants  in  the  South.  He  wrote  to  one  correspondent  late 
in  January:  "You  are  laboring  under  the  impression  that 
there  is  a  liberal  fund  provided  for  distribution.  Such  is  not 
the  case.  I  am  personally  providing  what  seems  to  be  necessary 
for  such  expenses  as  are  legitimate.  Mr.  McKinley  is  most  de- 
cidedly opposed  to  the  expenditure  of  money  along  the  line  of 
purchasing  support.  Therefore  I  suggest  that  in  districts 
where  the  sentiment  is  against  us,  from  whatever  cause,  we  had 
better  avoid  any  fight.  We  will  not  find  fault  with  you  if  you 
secure  no  districts  which  cannot  be  won  on  the  merits  of  Mr. 
McKinley  as  a  candidate."  The  difficulties  under  which  he 
labored  may  be  inferred  from  the  following  letter,  written  early 
in  February :  "I  am  in  receipt  of  yours  of  the  3d  and  enclose  a 
draft  for  $500,  which  is  all  I  can  possibly  spare  for  the  occasion. 
The  fact  is,  my  friend,  I  am  at  a  point  where  I  will  have  to  put 
a  stop  on  expenditures,  until  some  of  our  friends  come  to  our 
assistance,  which  up  to  date  has  not  been  done.  Business  is  as 
bad  as  it  was  in  '93,  and  I  have  had  to  borrow  this  money  to 
send  to  you.  My  firm  is  as  hard  up  as  I  am."  So  far  from  being 
a  campaign  in  which  money  was  freely  disbursed,  the  fight  for 
Mr.  McKinley's  nomination  was  an  example  of  the  attainment 
of  a  striking  political  success  without  any  but  a  very  economical 
expenditure  of  money. 

In  a  speech  made  to  his  friends  at  the  Union  Club  in  Cleve- 
land after  the  Convention  was  over,  Mr.  Hanna  declared  he 
had  been  forbidden  by  Mr.  McKinley  to  win  the  nomination 
by  means  of  any  pledge  of  office  or  remuneration.  There  is  no 
evidence  either  in  Mr.  Hanna's  correspondence  or  in  the  testi- 
mony of  his  associates  that  specific  pledges  were  made  to 
bestow  particular  offices  on  particular  men.  But  many  prom- 
ises were  undoubtedly  made  that  the  local  political  leaders 
who  worked  for  Mr.  McKinley's  nomination  would  in  the  event 
of  success  be  "recognized"  in  the  distribution  of  Federal  pat- 
ronage. Again  and  again  Mr.  Hanna  wrote  to  local  politi- 


186      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS    LIFE   AND   WORK 

cians  who  were  known  to  favor  Mr.  McKinley  that  if  they 
would  organize  their  district  or  state  in  his  favor  they  would 
be  consulted  after  the  election  in  respect  to  the  appointments. 
In  so  wording  the  promises,  Mr.  Hanna  freed  himself  and  Mr. 
McKinley  from  specific  obligations.  They  could  always  re- 
ject any  proposed  appointment  in  case  it  seemed  to  them  un- 
fit. The  distinction  between  making  a  definite  pledge  and  ad- 
mitting a  general  claim  for  "recognition"  has  a  validity  which 
should  not  be  ignored,  even  by  those  who  deplore  any  purchase 
of  political  support  by  the  promise  of  official  patronage.  The 
American  Civil  Service  can  never  become  efficient  unless  such 
methods  are  abandoned;  but  they  are  deeply  rooted  in  our 
political  practice,  and  their  use  was  considered  necessary  to  the 
nomination  of  Mr.  McKinley.  They  were  so  essential  a  part 
of  the  political  system,  to  which  Mr.  Hanna  was  accustomed, 
that  he  would  have  regarded  their  scrupulous  avoidance  as 
absurd. 

In  telling  his  friends  at  the  Union  Club  that  Mr.  McKinley 
had  forbidden  the  purchase  of  support  by  specific  pledges,  Mr. 
Hanna  was  probably  thinking  of  the  negotiations  between  him- 
self and  the  Eastern  " bosses."  He  himself  came  to  recognize 
that  such  bargains  gravely  compromised  the  public  interest; 
and  the  lesson  which  his  friend  had  taught  him  was  one  which 
he  did  not  forget.  In  the  distribution  of  patronage  after  the 
election,  most  of  the  men  who  had  contributed  effectively  to 
Mr.  McKinley's  nomination  received  offices,  but  in  spite  of  cer- 
tain mistakes  an  honest  attempt  was  made  to  fill  the  higher 
offices  with  able  and  disinterested  public  servants.  Both  the 
President  and  his  friend  knew  the  value  to  the  administration 
of  good  service  and  the  danger  of  poor  service.  Under  Mr. 
McKinley's  stewardship  the  country  was  on  the  whole  well 
served  by  its  higher  executive  officials.  The  earlier  mistakes 
were  soon  rectified,  and  the  vacated  offices  were  always  filled 
by  exceptionally  strong  administrators. 

The  promise  of  Federal  offices,  like  the  expenditure  of  money, 
played,  however,  only  a  subordinate  part  in  the  nomination 
of  Mr.  McKinley.  Some  of  the  other  candidates  had  money 
to  spend  and  offices  to  promise;  but  they  could  make  slight 
headway  by  virtue  of  such  paddles.  Mr.  McKinley  had  behind 


THE   MAKING   OF  A   PRESIDENT  187 

him  a  current  of  popular  favor,  which  was  skilfully  and 
systematically  exploited  to  the  very  limit.  It  might  have  pre- 
vailed, even  if  it  had  not  been  exploited,  but  neither  the  candi- 
date nor  his  friend  was  taking  any  chances.  The  final  success 
was  overwhelming,  because  advantage  had  been  seized  of  every 
opportunity  to  make  it  so.  That  the  opportunities  were  good 
does  not  subtract  from  the  rarity  of  the  achievement.  Mr. 
McKinley  and  Mr.  Hanna  succeeded  because  they  deserved 
to  succeed.  Back  of  every  substantial  success  in  American 
politics,  one  may  trace  the  influence  of  very  personal  and  human 
forces,  and  the  Republican  nomination  of  1896  was  no  exception. 
Mr.  McKinley  was  a  man  who  had  the  faculty  of  making 
friends,  not  because  he  actually  did  very  much  for  others,  but 
because  of  the  amiability,  the  tact  and  the  good  taste  he  showed 
in  all  his  personal  relationships.  By  virtue  of  his  affability  he 
usually  avoided  making  enemies,  even  when  he  failed  to  make 
friends.  The  men  who  would  not  fight  on  his  side  had  no 
special  reason  for  fighting  against  him,  and  he  sought  to  be  as 
scrupulously  correct  in  his  political  methods  as  he  was  scru- 
pulously amiable  in  his  personal  relations.  Added  to  this  per- 
sonal availability  as  a  candidate  was  his  equally  decisive  sec- 
tional availability.  The  Middle  West  usually  furnishes  the 
Republican  presidential  candidates,  because  by  location  and 
outlook  it  is  more  representative  of  the  whole  nation  than  any 
other  part  of  the  country.  Its  local  interests  and  traditions  have 
something  in  common  with  the  interests  and  traditions  both 
of  the  manufacturing  East  and  the  agricultural  West.  A  candi- 
date from  an  Eastern  state,  such  as  Mr.  Thomas  B.  Reed, 
usually  lacks  this  advantage,  and  starts  for  this  reason  under  a 
grave  handicap.  The  handicap  is  the  more  severe  in  case  his 
state  is  small  and  by  no  means  doubtful.  Mr.  McKinley  repre- 
sented, on  the  whole,  a  group  of  ideas  and  interests  as  nearly 
national  as  could  any  political  leader  of  his  own  generation. 
Moreover,  his  personal  and  local  merits  as  a  candidate  were 
raised  to  a  higher  power  by  the  course  of  political  and  economic 
history  from  1890  to  1895.  The  panic  of  '93,  the  acuteness  of 
the  resulting  privations  and  the  failure  of  the  Wilson  Bill  gave 
real  plausibility  and  enormous  political  effect  to  the  claim  that 
he  was  the  "advance  agent"  of  prosperity. 


ft 
188       MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

Mark  Hanna  seems  to  have  been  born  and  raised  particularly 
for  the  purpose  of  exploiting  these  advantages.  He  loved  Mc- 
Kinley  as  a  man.  He  admired  the  politician.  Whenever  he 
had  an  enthusiasm,  he  could  communicate  it.  He  could  make 
others  believe  in  McKinley  as  he  did.  He  could  impart  his 
own  energy  of  affection  and  conviction  to  the  whole  movement 
on  behalf  of  his  friend's  nomination.  He  himself  was  the  kind 
of  American  citizen  whom  McKinley  could  represent  only. 
He  embodied  in  his  own  person  the  enterprising,  homogeneous, 
uncritical  Americanism  of  the  Middle  West  which,  with  all  its 
new  organization  and  equipment,  derived  its  vitality  from  the 
earlier  economic  nationalism  of  the  pioneer.  Americans  of 
this  type  had  always  associated  the  American  system  with  a 
generally  diffused  economic  prosperity.  Acute  and  widespread 
privation  meant  that  the  system  was  out  of  joint;  and  under 
the  prevailing  methods  of  stimulation  by  the  government  of  all 
productive  enterprise,  the  repair  of  the  system  became  a  polit- 
ical responsibility.  The  restoration  of  the  Republican  party 
to  power  and  the  election  of  McKinley  assumed  in  his  eyes  the 
character  of  a  patriotic  mission. 

His  substantial  successes  in  politics,  including  the  nomina- 
tion of  William  McKinley,  were  born  of  the  fact  that  he  re- 
mained an  unspecialized  American  citizen,  whose  behavior 
awakened  responsive  approval  among  other  Americans  of  the 
same  kind.  He  expressed  a  phase  of  public  opinion,  which  when 
aroused  was  all  the  more  powerful,  because  it  was  only  semi- 
conscious and  because  it  never  could  be  completely  expressed 
by  lawyers  or  politicians.  His  ability  to  represent  this  element 
in  the  American  political  and  economic  life  sharply  dis- 
tinguished him  from  the  ordinary  political  professional.  Just 
as  in  business  he  never  became  a  dislocated  financier,  so  in 
politics  he  never  became  the  mere  manipulator  of  a  machine. 
He  cooperated  with  the  machine  politicians.  He  used  many 
of  their  methods.  His  standard  of  behavior  in  politics  was 
not  as  high  as  his  standard  of  behavior  in  business.  When  he 
supped  with  the  Devil,  he  fished  with  a  long  spoon.  But  in 
these  respects  he  was  faithful  to  his  type.  The  typical  American 
has  never  been  scrupulous  about  the  means  which  he  used  in 
order  to  accomplish  what  seemed  to  him  a  worthy  purpose. 


THE    MAKING   OF   A    PRESIDENT  189 

Mr.  Hanna  became  more  rather  than  less  typical,  because  he 
used  the  professional  politicians  instead  of  fighting  them.  But 
he  never  became  one  of  them ;  and  if  he  had  done  so,  he 
would  have  been  as  successful  in  nominating  McKinley  as 
Thomas  C.  Platt  was  in  nominating  Mr.  Levi  P.  Morton. 

There  is,  I  believe,  no  close  parallel  in  American  politics  for 
the  part  which  Mark  Hanna  played  in  the  nomination  of  Mc- 
Kinley. Of  course  other  men  have  labored  faithfully  and  effi- 
ciently to  make  their  friends  or  associates  a  presidential  candi- 
date. A  state  "boss"  is  always  calculating  whether  or  not 
he  cannot  force  some  favorite  candidate  on  the  Convention. 
Presidents  have  sometimes  had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  the  nam- 
ing of  their  successors.  But  when  Mr.  Hanna  began  to  work 
first  for  Sherman  and  then  for  McKinley,  he  started  with  no 
leverage  not  possessed  by  hundreds  of  his  fellow-citizens.  He 
was  merely  a  well-to-do  business  man  with  some  small  polit- 
ical experience.  His  special  qualification  for  the  task  consisted 
merely  in  the  fact  that  he  wanted  to  do  it.  The  will  to  nomi- 
nate a  President  aroused  in  its  possessor  the  abilities  necessary 
for  its  accomplishment.  After  he  had  failed  with  Sherman, 
his  ambition  was  sweetened  and  sanctified  by  a  warm  and  loyal 
personal  attachment  to  the  new  candidate  himself.  Mr.  Hanna 
was  aroused  to  still  greater  activity  and  still  greater  sacrifices, 
until  the  accomplishment  of  the  task  absorbed  all  his  time  and 
energy.  He  proved  equal  to  one  emergency  after  another. 
He  selected  good  subordinates.  He  convinced  and  persuaded 
doubters.  He  converted  to  McKinley 'a  support  a  whole  sec- 
tion of  the  country.  He  worked  upon  public  opinion  quite  as 
much  as  he  did  upon  individuals  and  in  the  most  effective  way. 
Gradually  the  possible  candidate  was  made  probable  and  then 
irresistible.  The  task  was  achieved.  William  McKinley  became 
the  Republican  nominee  for  the  presidency ;  and  Mark  Hanna 
was  no  less  responsible  for  the  triumph  than  was  the  candidate 
himself. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE   CONVENTION   OF   1896 

BY  the  first  of  May,  1896,  Mark  Hanna  had  every  reason  to 
believe  that  the  nomination  of  Mr.  McKinley  was  assured.  A 
majority  of  the  delegates  were  known  to  be  favorable  to  his 
selection.  It  only  remained  to  make  assurance  doubly  sure  by 
securing  an  organization  of  the  Convention  favorable  to  its 
prospective  candidate.  Such  an  organization  was  the  more 
necessary  because  the  fight  in  the  South  and  elsewhere  had  re- 
sulted in  the  election  of  several  contesting  delegations,  and  it 
was  important  that  those  favorable  to  Mr.  McKinley  should  be 
seated.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  greater  victory  included  the 
less.  His  prospective  triumph  assured  him  the  control  of  the 
National  Committee.  By  virtue  of  this  control  definite  plans 
were  made  for  the  organization  of  the  Convention,  the  nomina- 
tion for  Vice-President  and  the  several  planks  of  the  platform. 
A  slate  was  prepared;  and  the  candidate  himself  in  coopera- 
tion with  certain  of  his  friends  drew  up  a  tentative  draft  of  the 
statement  of  true  Republican  principles  and  policies. 

The  Convention  assembled  at  St.  Louis  on  Monday,  June 
15.  So  far  as  the  slate  was  concerned,  the  program  was  car- 
ried through  without  a  hitch.  The  temporary  chairman  was 
Mr.  Charles  W.  Fairbanks  of  Indiana,  the  permanent  chairman, 
Senator  John  M.  Thurston  of  Nebraska.  The  Committee  on 
Credentials  paid  no  attention  to  any  contesting  delegations 
except  those  from  Delaware  and  Texas,  and  in  both  cases  the 
McKinley  delegates  were  seated.  Thus  the  result  became  more 
than  ever  a  foregone  conclusion,  although  a  show  of  resistance 
continued.  Thomas  B.  Reed,  the  only  other  serious  candidate, 
was  placed  in  nomination  by  Senator  Henry  Cabot  Lodge  of 
Massachusetts,  but  considerable  as  Mr.  Reed's  services  had 
been  to  his  party  and  his  country,  he  remained  a  sectional 
candidate.  As  it  was,  Mr.  McKinley  obtained  almost  as  many 
votes  in  New  England  as  Mr.  Reed  obtained  in  all  the  rest  of 

190 


THE   CONVENTION   OF   1896  191 

the  country.  The  two  wealthiest  and  most  populous  states  in 
the  Union  made  their  better  citizens  blush  by  presenting  candi- 
dates who  had  less  than  no  claims  for  consideration.  The 
candidate  from  Iowa,  Senator  Allison,  was  negligible  outside 
of  his  own  state.  Mr.  McKinley's  name  was  placed  before  the 
Convention  by  Senator-elect  James  B.  Foraker  in  a  speech 
which  was  the  more  impressive  because  of  the  source  from  which 
it  came.  Mr.  McKinley  received  661J  votes  on  the  first 
ballot  against  84|  for  his  closest  rival,  Mr.  Thomas  B.  Reed. 
Sixty-two  of  the  Reed  delegates  came  from  New  England,  and 
the  rest  chiefly  from  the  South.  Mr.  McKinley  had  the  Middle 
West  and  the  West,  with  the  exception  of  Iowa,  almost  solidly 
behind  him,  and  he  had  made  serious  inroads  upon  the  strength 
of  his  opponents  in  their  own  particular  bailiwicks.  His 
triumph  was  so  decisive  and  overwhelming  that  no  outsider 
could  realize  how  much  effort  and  contrivance  had  been  spent 
upon  making  it  irresistible. 

Inasmuch  as  Ohio  had  furnished  the  head  of  the  ticket,  the 
vice-presidential  nomination,  according  to  the  prevailing 
practice,  ought  to  go  to  some  doubtful  Eastern  state.  New 
York  can  usually  claim  the  office  under  such  conditions ;  but 
in  the  present  instance  sound  reasons  could  be  urged  why  its 
claims  could  be  ignored  with  impunity.  The  bitter  opposition 
which  Mr.  Thomas  C.  Platt  had  made  to  McKinley's  nomina- 
tion had  created  a  good  deal  of  personal  ill-feeling;  and  as  a 
consequence  there  was  no  candidate  from  New  York  upon  whom 
Republicans  from  that  state  could  agree.  But  the  considera- 
tion which  probably  had  most  weight  was  the  fact  that  with 
the  word  "gold"  already  inserted  in  the  platform  New  York 
could  hardly  be  called  a  doubtful  state.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  adjoining  state  of  New  Jersey  submitted  an  eligible  candi- 
date in  Mr.  Garret  A.  Hobart,  who  had  done  much  to  strengthen 
the  Republican  party  in  his  own  neighborhood.  Mr.  Hobart 
was  well  known  to  Mr.  Hanna,  and  in  all  probability  his  nomina- 
tion had  been  scheduled  for  some  time.  It  was  practically 
announced  early  in  June.  He  was  a  lawyer  and  a  business 
man  with  an  exclusively  local  reputation ;  and  if  he  did  little 
to  strengthen  the  ticket  he  did  nothing  to  weaken  it.  He  proved 
to  be  a  useful  coadjutor  both  during  the  campaign  and  after 


192      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

the  election;  and  he  subsequently  exercised  more  influence  in 
the  counsels  of  the  administration  than  is  usually  the  case  with 
the  occupant  of  the  vice-presidential  chair. 

In  all  the  foregoing  respects  the  Convention  proved  to  be  a 
perfectly  manageable  body,  which  submitted  good-naturedly 
to  the  will  of  its  conquerors.  But  in  one  essential  matter  it 
proved  to  be  far  less  manageable,  and  its  rebellious  indepen- 
dence in  this  respect  made  havoc  of  all  the  carefully  laid  plans 
of  Mr.  McKinley  and  Mr.  Hanna.  Their  hands  were  forced  in 
relation  to  the  most  important  plank  in  the  platform.  The 
candidate  had  to  accept  a  new  definition  of  Republican  policy 
in  respect  to  the  currency  —  and  one  which  in  its  effect  might 
well  change  the  whole  nature  of  the  campaign.  The  man  who 
had  been  nominated  as  the  High  Priest  of  Protection  found 
his  favorite  policy  converted  into  comparative  insignificance 
and  himself  forced  to  assume  a  precise  and  vigorous  attitude 
in  relation  to  a  question  which  he  had  always  preferred  to  leave 
vague  and  ambiguous.  Instead  of  running  on  an  issue  with 
which  his  whole  political  career  was  associated,  he  was  forced  to 
run  on  an  issue  upon  which  his  own  record  was  equivocal,  and 
which  in  his  opinion  gravely  compromised  the  success  of  his 
candidacy. 

A  great  deal  of  controversy  has  arisen  about  the  way  in  which 
the  word  "gold"  was  inserted  in  the  currency  plank  of  the  Re- 
publican platform  of  1896.  A  number  of  different  claimants 
have  insisted  upon  their  individual  responsibility  for  its  inser- 
tion. Among  others  Mr.  Thomas  C.  Platt  asserts  without 
blushing  that  the  honor  chiefly,  if  not  exclusively,  belongs  to 
him.  In  his  "Autobiography  "  (p.  310)  he  declares  that  "in  1896 
I  scored  what  I  regard  as  the  greatest  achievement  of  my  po- 
litical career.  That  was  the  insertion  of  the  gold  plank  in  the 
St.  Louis  platform."  In  his  account  of  the  matter  he  admits 
that  Senator  Lodge  and  certain  friends  of  Mr.  McKinley,  such 
as  H.  H.  Kohlsaat,  Myron  T.  Herrick,  Henry  C.  Payne  and 
William  R.  Merriam,  may  also  have  contributed  to  the  result, 
but  if  the  assertion  quoted  above  be  taken  as  literally  true,  the 
real  hero  of  the  incident  must  be  Mr.  Thomas  C.  Platt.  He 
has  admitted  it  himself.  On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Kohlsaat  de- 
clares no  less  emphatically  that  he,  more  than  any  other  single 


THE    CONVENTION   OF    1896  193 

individual,  was  responsible  for  the  appearance  of  the  magical 
word.  Another  equally  vigorous  claimant  is  Mr.  James  B. 
Foraker.  He  was  the  chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Reso- 
lutions, and  he  asserts  emphatically  that  no  matter  what 
palaver  may  have  preceded  the  final  decision,  the  Committee, 
of  which  he  was  chairman,  was  really  responsible  both  for  the 
general  wording  of  the  plank  and  for  the  actual  insertion  of 
"gold"  before  the  phrase  " standard  of  value." 

Notwithstanding  these  conflicting  claims  and  the  more  or 
less  conflicting  evidence  upon  which  they  are  based,  the  sev- 
eral accounts  agree  upon  certain  fundamental  facts;  and  a 
fairly  complete  story  of  what  actually  occurred  can  be  pieced 
together,  which  derives  nothing  from  controverted  testimony. 
There  will  remain  certain  minor  ambiguities  and  conflicts  of 
evidence,  which  may  be  partly  explained  by  the  failure  of  cer- 
tain witnesses  to  take  account  of  events  which  had  occurred  with- 
out their  knowledge  on  other  parts  of  a  complicated  and  con- 
fused field  of  action.  In  spite  of  these  minor  conflicts,  some  of 
which  I  shall  attempt  to  explain,  a  sufficiently  complete  story 
can  be  told,  which  includes  no  incidents  which  are  not  intrinsi- 
cally probable  or  which  are  not  confirmed  by  more  than  one 
witness. 

Undoubtedly  Mr.  McKinley  himself  wanted  to  subordinate  the 
currency  issue  to  that  of  protection.  His  own  record  in  relation 
to  legislation  affecting  the  standard  of  value  had  been  vacil- 
lating. He  was  a  bimetallist,  and  had  stood  for  the  use  of  both 
gold  and  silver  in  the  currency  of  the  United  States  without 
inquiring  too  closely  whether  the  means  actually  used  to  force 
silver  into  circulation  had  or  had  not  tended  to  lower  the  stand- 
ard of  value.  His  personal  political  prominence  had  been  due 
to  his  earnest  and  insistent  advocacy  of  the  doctrine  of  high 
protection,  and  he  feared  that  if  the  currency  issue  were  sharply 
defined,  the  result  would  necessarily  be  (as  it  was)  a  diminution 
in  price  of  his  own  political  and  economic  stock-in-trade.  Con- 
siderations of  party  expediency  reenforced  his  own  personal 
predilections.  His  party  was  united  on  the  issue  of  protection. 
It  was  divided  on  the  currency  issue.  There  were  "silver 
Republicans, "  and  they  all  came  from  a  part  of  the  country  in 
which  he  personally  was  very  popular.  The  sentiment  in  favor 


194      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS    LIFE    AND    WORK 

of  a  single  gold  standard  was  strongest  in  New  England  and 
the  Middle  States,  which  were  more  or  less  opposed  to  his  nomi- 
nation. If  he  had  favored  unequivocally  a  single  gold  standard, 
his  candidacy  would  have  been  weakened  among  his  friends, 
while  his  opponents  would  have  merely  shifted  their  ground 
of  attack.  Not  unnaturally  he  proposed  to  evade  the  issue  by 
standing  for  "  sound  money  "  without  defining  precisely  what 
sound  money  really  was. 

Mark  Hanna's  personal  attitude  was  different  from  that  of 
Mr.  McKinley.  He  was  enough  of  a  banker  to  realize  that  the 
business  of  the  country  was  suffering  far  more  from  uncertainty 
about  the  standard  of  value  than  it  was  from  foreign  competi- 
tion. Mr.  William  R.  Merriam  tells  of  certain  interesting 
conversations  which  took  place  in  August,  1895,  on  the  porch 
of  Mr.  Hanna's  house  overlooking  Lake  Erie,  between  himself, 
Russell  A.  Alger,  Mr.  Hanna  and  Mr.  McKinley,  in  which  both 
the  political  and  economic  aspects  of  the  prospective  campaign 
issues  were  thoroughly  discussed.  In  these  conventions  Mr. 
McKinley  was,  in  Mr.  Merriam's  own  phrase,  " obsessed"  with 
the  idea  of  the  tariff  as  the  dominant  issue  of  the  coming  cam- 
paign. Mr.  Hanna,  on  the  other  hand,  was,  in  Mr.  Merriam's 
words,  "in  favor  of  committing  the  Republican  party  to  gold, 
as  the  sole  basis  of  currency,  and  he  was  anxious  and  willing 
to  lend  his  aid  to  the  furtherance  of  this  policy." 

Inasmuch  as  Mr.  McKinley  was  the  candidate,  his  views  pre- 
vailed. Throughout  the  whole  preliminary  canvass  the  cur- 
rency issue  was  evaded.  The  State  Conventions,  in  which  the 
candidate's  personal  influence  prevailed,  declared  for  sound 
money  and  the  coinage  of  silver  in  so  far  as  it  could  be  kept  on 
a  parity  with  gold.  Conventions  such  as  that  of  Wyoming 
instructed  their  delegates  for  McKinley,  while  declaring  at  the 
same  time  for  the  free  and  unlimited  coinage  of  silver.  Mr. 
Hanna  as  the  manager  of  the  campaign  realized  how  much  Mr. 
McKinley's  ambiguous  attitude  on  the  currency  was  helping 
the  canvass  in  the  Western  States,  and  he  probably  desired  as 
much  as  McKinley  did  that  any  more  precise  definition  of  the 
issue  should  at  least  be  postponed  until  after  Mr.  McKinley's 
nomination  was  assured.  In  no  event  would  he  have  insisted 
upon  any  opinion  of  his  own  in  respect  to  an  important  matter 


THE    CONVENTION   OF    1896  195 

of  public  policy  in  antagonism  to  that  of  his  candidate  and 
friend. 

McKinley's  opinion  remained  unchanged  until  the  very  eve 
of  the  Convention.  Mr.  Kohlsaat  asserts  that  on  Sunday, 
June  7,  he  spent  hours  trying  to  convince  Mr.  McKinley  of  the 
necessity  of  inserting  the  word  "gold"  in  the  platform.  The 
latter  argued  in  opposition  that  ninety  per  cent  of  his  mail  and 
his  callers  were  against  such  decisive  action,  and  he  asserted 
emphatically  that  thirty  days  after  the  Convention  was  over, 
the  currency  question  would  drop  out  of  sight  and  the  tariff 
would  become  the  sole  issue.  The  currency  plank,  tentatively 
drawn  by  Mr.  McKinley  and  his  immediate  advisers,  embodied 
his  resolution  to  keep  the  currency  issue  subordinate  and  vague. 
According  to  Mr.  Foraker,  Mr.  J.  K.  Richards  came  to  him  at 
Cincinnati  some  days  before  the  date  of  the  meeting  of  the  Con- 
vention, bringing  with  him  direct  from  Canton  some  resolu- 
tions in  regard  to  the  money  and  the  tariff  questions  prepared 
by  the  friends  of  Mr.  McKinley  with  his  approval.  Mr. 
Foraker  had  been  slated  for  the  Committee  on  Resolutions; 
and  the  McKinley  draft  was  placed  in  his  hands  with  a  view  to 
having  them  incorporated  in  the  platform.  The  currency 
plank  as  handed  to  Mr.  Foraker  began  as  follows :  — 

"The  Republican  party  is  unreservedly  for  sound  money. 
It  is  unalterably  opposed  to  every  effort  to  debase  our  currency 
or  disturb  our  credit.  It  resumed  specie  payments  in  1879, 
and  since  then  it  has  made  and  kept  every  dollar  as  good  as 
gold.  This  it  will  continue  to  do,  maintaining  all  the  money 
of  the  United  States,  whether  gold,  silver  or  paper,  at  par  with 
the  best  money  of  the  world  and  up  to  the  standard  of  the  most 
enlightened  governments. 

"The  Republican  party  favors  the  use  of  silver  along  with 
gold  to  the  fullest  extent  consistent  with  the  maintenance  of 
the  parity  of  the  two  metals.  It  would  welcome  bimetallism 
based  upon  an  international  ratio,  but  until  that  can  be  secured 
it  is  the  plain  duty  of  the  United  States  to  maintain  our  present 
standard,  and  we  are  therefore  opposed  under  existing  conditions 
to  the  free  and  unlimited  coinage  of  silver  at  sixteen  to  one." 

The  resolutions  mentioned  by  Mr.  Foraker  were  placed  in 
his  hands  on  Monday  or  Tuesday,  June  8  or  9.  Mr.  Fora- 


196      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

ker,  however,  did  not  reach  St.  Louis  until  Saturday  morning; 
and  in  the  meantime  a  good  deal  had  been  happening  there 
and  elsewhere  in  respect  to  the  currency  plank.  Mr.  Hanna 
had  already  gone  to  St.  Louis.  When  he  arrived  he  had  in  his  pos- 
session a  draft  of  certain  resolutions,  presumably  the  same  which 
had  been  taken  to  Mr.  Foraker  by  Mr.  J.  K.  Richards.  He  was 
joined  in  St.  Louis  early  in  the  week  by  a  number  of  Mr.  McKin- 
ley's  friends  and  supporters ;  and  in  the  group  a  lively  discus- 
sion almost  immediately  arose  as  to  the  precise  wording  which 
should  be  adopted  in  defining  the  currency  policy  of  the  Republi- 
can party.  This  group  consisted  in  the  beginning  of  Senator 
Redfield  Proctor  of  Vermont,  Colonel  Myron  T.  Herrick,  General 
Osborne  and  Mr.  Hanna  himself.  Mr.  Hanna  was  so  busy  in 
rounding  up  his  delegates  and  in  attending  to  other  details  that 
he  could  not  give  much  of  his  time  to  the  conferences  over  the 
platform,  but  he  was  in  and  out  and  knew  what  was  going  on. 

Towards  the  middle  of  the  week  the  group  of  gentlemen  par- 
ticipating in  these  conferences  was  increased  by  several  acces- 
sions from  the  number  of  Mr.  McKinley's  friends  in  other 
states,  among  whom  may  be  mentioned  Mr.  Henry  C.  Payne, 
William  R.  Merriam  and  Melville  E.  Stone.  After  his  arrival 
Mr.  Henry  C.  Payne  became  particularly  active  in  getting  the 
conference  together  and  in  having  the  platform  typewritten 
anew,  after  every  change,  and  in  having  copies  supplied  to  each 
participant.  On  Wednesday  morning  Mr.  Hanna  handed  to 
Mr.  Payne  the  draft  of  the  currency  plank  as  prepared  by  Mc- 
Kinley  with  the  request  that  it  be  revised  by  the  conference 
and  put  into  final  shape.  The  discussion  continued  on  Thurs- 
day. After  an  agreement  had  been  reached  on  certain  changes 
Mr.  Payne  was  asked  to  prepare  another  draft  for  discussion 
on  the  following  day,  which  was  Friday. 

On  Friday  morning  Mr.  H.  H.  Kohlsaat  of  Chicago  joined 
the  conference,  having  come  over  from  Chicago  in  response  to 
a  telegram  particularly  for  that  purpose.  Mr.  Kohlsaat's  re- 
lation to  the  whole  matter  was  peculiar.  He  was  a  friend  of 
long-standing  both  of  Mr.  McKinley  and  Mr.  Hanna.  He  had, 
of  course,  been  favorable  to  the  former's  nomination,  but  in 
the  newspapers  which  he  controlled  he  had  combined  an  earnest 
advocacy  of  Mr.  McKinley's  selection  with  an  even  more  ear- 


THE    CONVENTION   OF    1896  197 

nest  and  insistent  advocacy  of  the  single  gold  standard.  He 
states  that  he  had  not  been  allowed  by  Mr.  McKinley  and  Mr. 
Hanna  to  assist  in  the  contest  for  the  delegation  from  Illinois, 
because  they  were  embarrassed  by  his  attitude  on  the  currency 
question.  With  the  addition  of  Mr.  Kohlsaat  the  members  of 
the  conference  consisted  of  Mr.  Payne,  Colonel  Herrick,  Senator 
Proctor,  ex-Governor  Merriam  and  Mr.  Stone.  Mr.  Hanna 
was  present  a  certain  part  of  the  time,  but  he  had  so  many  other 
matters  which  required  his  attention  that  he  was  frequently 
being  called  off. 

There  is  some  conflict  of  testimony  as  to  proceedings  of  the 
conference  on  Friday.  Colonel  Herrick  states  that  the  final  draft 
had  been  substantially  submitted  and  accepted  on  Friday  morn- 
ing. Mr.  Kohlsaat,  on  the  other  hand,  declares  that  in  the  draft 
forming  the  basis  of  discussion  at  the  beginning  of  the  confer- 
ence the  word  "gold"  was  omitted.  This  draft  read  as  follows : 

"The  Republican  party  is  unreservedly  for  sound  money. 
It  caused  the  enactment  of  the  law  providing  for  the  resumption 
of  specie  payments  in  1879.  Since  then  every  dollar  has  been 
as  good  as  gold.  We  are  unalterably  opposed  to  every  measure 
calculated  to  debase  our  currency  or  impair  the  credit  of  our 
country.  We  are  therefore  opposed  to  the  free  and  unlimited 
coinage  of  silver  except  by  agreement  with  the  leading  com- 
mercial nations  of  Europe,  and  until  such  agreement  can  be 
obtained  we  believe  that  the  existing  gold  standard  should  be 
preserved.  We  favor  the  use  of  silver  as  currency,  but  to  the 
extent  only  that  its  parity  with  gold  can  be  maintained,  and  we 
favor  all  measures  designed  to  maintain  inviolably  the  money 
of  the  United  States,  whether  coin  or  paper,  at  the  present 
standard,  the  standard  of  the  most  enlightened  nations  of  the 
earth." 

The  foregoing  draft  was  furnished  by  Colonel  Herrick.  It  differs 
in  one  or  two  minor  respects,  and  in  one  essential  respect,  from 
the  draft  which,  according  to  Mr.  Kohlsaat,  formed  the  basis 
for  discussion  at  the  conference  of  Friday.  The  minor  differ- 
ences are  merely  matters  of  order  and  may  be  ignored.  The 
essential  difference  turns  upon  the  insertion  of  the  word  "gold" 
before  "standard."  According  to  Mr.  Herrick  the  draft  pre- 
pared by  Mr.  Payne  contained  the  word  "gold."  According 


198      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS    LIFE   AND   WORK 

to  Mr.  Kohlsaat  the  decision  to  insert  that  word  was  reached 
only  after  a  protracted  discussion  and  a  sharp  controversy 
between  himself  and  Mr.  Hanna.  Not  until  four  o'clock  in  the 
afternoon,  after  Mr.  Hanna  had  withdrawn,  was  an  agreement 
obtained.  In  view  of  the  unanimity  of  his  friends  Mr.  Hanna 
gave  his  consent  and  agreed  to  urge  its  acceptance  on  Mr. 
McKinley.  It  was  Colonel  Herrick  who  telegraphed  to  the  candi- 
date and  obtained  his  approval.  According  to  the  testimony 
of  Colonel  Herrick,  Mr.  Kohlsaat,  Mr.  Merriam  and  Senator 
Proctor,  the  whole  matter  was  settled,  so  far  as  Mr.  McKinley 
and  his  friends  were  concerned,  by  Friday  night. 

In  the  several  accounts  of  these  conferences,  the  one  doubtful 
point  is  whether  or  not  the  word  "gold"  was  contained  in  the 
draft  prepared  by  Mr.  Payne.  The  matter  is  not  of  great 
importance,  except  in  respect  to  Mr.  Kohlsaat's  claim  that  he, 
more  than  any  single  individual,  was  responsible  for  its  insertion 
and  that  he  was  called  a  "d — d  fool"  by  Mr.  Hanna  for  his  pains. 
The  only  available  account  from  Mr.  Hanna  himself  of  his 
own  relation  to  the  gold  plank  is  contained  in  the  following 
letter  to  A.  K.  McClure,  written  on  June  28,  1900. 

"  MY  DEAR  MR.  MCCLURE  :  — 

"I  am  in  receipt  of  yours  of  the  21st  inst.,  which  has  just  been 
reached  in  my  accumulation  of  letters.  I  do  not  care  to  have 
go  into  print  all  that  I  told  you  personally  in  regard  to  the  gold 
plank  of  the  St.  Louis  platform.  When  I  went  to  St.  Louis  I 
took  with  me  a  memorandum  on  the  tariff  and  financial  questions 
drawn  by  Mr.  McKinley.  During  all  the  discussions  there 
prior  to  the  action  of  the  Committee  on  Resolutions  I  showed  it 
to  a  few  friends  and  had  it  rewritten  by  the  Hon.  J.  K.  Richards, 
the  present  U.  S.  Solicitor  General.  It  was  but  slightly  changed 
by  those  who  considered  it  before  it  went  to  the  Committee  and 
as  presented  was  passed  by  the  Committee  with  little  or  no 
change.  My  part  of  the  business  was  to  harmonize  all  sections 
and  prevent  any  discussion  of  the  subject  outside  the  Committee 
which  would  line  up  any  factions  against  it  (except  the  ultra 
silver  men).  In  that  I  succeeded,  and  felt  willing  to  give  all  the 
credit  claimed  by  those  who  assisted.  The  original  memoran- 
dum is  in  the  possession  of  a  personal  friend,  whom  I  do  not  care 


THE   CONVENTION   OF   1896  199 

to  name  without  his  consent.  The  whole  thing  was  managed 
in  order  to  succeed  in  getting  what  we  got,  and  that  was  my  only 
interest. 

"  Sincerely  yours, 

"M.  A.  HANNA." 

The  foregoing  letter,  while  it  throws  no  light  upon  the  time 
and  occasion  of  the  insertion  of  the  decisive  word  into  the  draft 
supplies  the  clew  which  enables  us  to  interpret  Mr.  Hanna's 
own  behavior,  both  during  these  conferences  and  thereafter. 
He  himself  was  in  favor  of  the  gold  standard,  and  in  favor  of  a 
declaration  to  that  effect.  But  partly  because  of  his  .loyalty 
to  Mr.  McKinley,  and  partly  because  he  did  not  want  any 
decisive  step  taken  until  the  sentiment  of  the  delegates  had  been 
disclosed,  he  preferred  to  have  his  hand  forced,  and  he  did  not 
want  to  have  it  forced  too  soon.  Although  a  decision,  so  far 
as  Mr.  McKinley  and  his  friends  were  concerned,  had  been 
reached  on  Friday,  public  announcement  of  the  fact  was  scrupu- 
lously avoided ;  and  Mr.  Hanna  evidently  proposed  to  avoid  it 
as  long  as  he  could.  It  was  essential,  considering  the  divergence 
of  opinion  among  Mr.  McKinley's  supporters,  that  the  candidate's 
official  representative  should  not  assume  the  position  of  publicly 
and  explicitly  asking  the  Convention  to  adopt  the  gold  stand- 
ard. Mr.  McKinley's  personal  popularity  would  suffer  much 
less  in  case  every  superficial  fact  pointed  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  gold  standard  was  being  forced  on  him  by  an  irresistible 
party  sentiment. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  such  was  the  case.  As  the  delegates 
gathered  in  St.  Louis,  the  friends  of  the  gold  standard  learned 
for  the  first  time  their  own  strength.  Business  men  east  of  the 
Mississippi  had  been  reaching  the  conclusion  that  the  country 
could  never  emerge  from  the  existing  depression  until  a  gold 
standard  of  value  was  assured.  They  and  their  representatives 
learned  at  St.  Louis  that  this  opinion  had  become  almost  unan- 
imous among  responsible  and  well-informed  men.  Mr.  Hanna  re- 
ceived shoals  of  telegrams  from  business  men  of  all  degrees  of  im- 
portance insisting  upon  such  action.  The  substantial  unanimity 
of  this  sentiment  among  Republican  leaders,  particularly  in  the 
Middle  West,  clinched  the  matter.  Mr.  McKinley  would  not 


200      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

have  consented  to  any  decisive  utterance,  had  he  not  been  con- 
vinced that  the  great  majority  of  his  friends  and  his  party  were 
unalterably  in  favor  of  it.  Every  one  of  the  participants  in  the 
preliminary  conferences  considered  it  desirable,  and  their 
united  recommendation  constituted  a  constraining  force  which 
Mr.  McKinley  could  not  ignore.  Such  being  the  case,  any 
controversy  as  to  the  precise  time  and  occasion  of  the  insertion 
of  the  word  "gold"  into  the  actual  draft  becomes  of  small  im- 
portance. It  would  have  been  inserted  anyway,  not  by  any 
one  man  or  by  the  representatives  of  any  one  section,  but 
because  the  influential  members  of  the  party,  except  in  the 
Far  West,  had  become  united  on  the  subject.  Credit,  however, 
particularly  attaches  to  those  Middle  Western  politicians  and 
business  men,  who  had  the  intelligence  to  understand  and  the 
courage  to  insist  that  the  day  for  equivocation  in  relation  to 
this  essential  issue  had  passed,  and  who  persuaded  Mr.  McKinley 
that  he  must  stand  on  a  gold  platform  even  at  some  sacrifice  of 
personal  prestige  and  perhaps  at  some  risk  of  personal  success. 
If  Mr.  McKinley  had  failed  to  consent  to  the  insertion  of 
the  word  "gold,"  and  had  prevailed  upon  all  his  intimate 
friends  to  assume  the  same  attitude,  he  might  possibly  have 
prevented  his  own  nomination.  At  all  events,  as  soon  as  Mr. 
McKinley's  opponents  arrived,  they  immediately  began  an 
attack  on  what  was  manifestly  the  weak  point  in  the  McKinley 
fortifications.  They  knew  that  his  nomination  was  assured, 
unless,  perchance,  he  could  be  placed  in  opposition  to  the  will 
of  the  Convention  upon  some  important  matter,  and  of  course 
they  represented  a  part  of  the  country,  in  which  public  opinion 
in  general  was  more  united  in  favor  of  the  gold  standard  than 
it  was  in  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi  valleys.  Senators  Lodge 
and  Platt  reached  St.  Louis  on  Sunday.  They  learned  of  the 
controversy  over  the  currency  plank,  but  not  about  the  decision 
actually  reached.  Senator  Lodge  went  immediately  to  the 
McKinley  headquarters.  In  his  ensuing  interview  with  Mr. 
Hanna  the  latter  gave  him  no  encouragement  about  the  inser- 
tion into  the  plank  of  the  word  "gold."  Mr.  Lodge  and  ex- 
Governor  Draper  were  shown  the  drafts  of  two  resolutions, 
one  of  which  was  understood  to  have  just  arrived  from  Canton, 
and  neither  of  which  committed  the  party  to  the  gold  standard. 


THE    CONVENTION   OF   1896  201 

Senator  Lodge  then  told  Mr.  Hanna  that  these  drafts  were 
unsatisfactory,  and  that  Massachusetts  would  demand  a  vote 
upon  any  similar  plank.  After  some  further  talk  Mr.  Lodge 
went  away,  but  he  served  notice  on  Mr.  Hanna  that  efforts 
would  be  made  to  consolidate  the  sentiment  in  the  Convention 
opposed  to  any  "  straddle."  By  Monday  night  the  advocates 
of  the  gold  standard  had  a  majority  of  the  Convention  rounded 
up  in  favor  of  an  unequivocal  declaration  in  its  favor. 

Of  course,  this  was  precisely  the  result  which  Mr.  Hanna 
wanted.  The  evidence  is  conclusive  that  on  Friday  night 
both  he  and  Mr.  McKinley  were  prepared  to  accept  a  decisive 
gold  plank  (which  he  personally  had  always  approved)  but, 
as  he  says  in  his  letter  to  Mr.  McClure,  his  part  of  the  business 
was  "to  prevent  any  discussion  of  the  subject  outside  of  the 
Committee  on  Resolutions,  which  would  line  up  any  factions 
against  it."  That  is,  he  proposed  to  leave  the  action  of  the 
Convention  on  the  plank  uncertain,  until  the  Committee  on 
Resolutions  could  launch  a  draft  which  would  have  the  great 
majority  of  the  Convention  behind  it,  and  which  would  constrain 
the  doubters  and  the  trimmers.  By  failing  to  tell  Senator 
Lodge  that  a  draft  containing  the  word  "gold"  had  already  been 
accepted  by  McKinley,  he  astutely  accomplished  his  part  of  the 
business.  He  arranged  for  the  consolidation  of  the  sentiment 
in  favor  of  the  gold  standard,  while  he  prevented  any  consolida- 
tion of  the  sentiment  against  it,  except  on  the  part  of  the  ir- 
reconcilables.  If  he  had  announced  as  early  as  Saturday  or 
Sunday  that  a  declaration  in  favor  of  the  gold  standard  would 
be  supported  by  Mr.  McKinley's  friends  and  probably  adopted 
by  the  Convention,  a  considerable  number  of  half-hearted 
and  double-minded  delegates  might  have  been  won  over  by  the 
leaders  of  the  silver  faction.  And  it  might  have  seemed  like 
a  desertion  by  McKinley  of  the  pro-silver  delegates,  who  had 
been  prevented  by  the  ambiguity  of  the  candidate's  previous 
attitude  from  opposing  him. 

The  text  of  the  plank  as  it  came  from  the  Committee  and 
appeared  in  the  platform,  read  as  follows  :  — 

"The  Republican  party  is  unreservedly  for  sound  money.  It 
caused  the  enactment  of  a  law  providing  for  the  resumption  of 
specie  payments  in  1879.  Since  then  every  dollar  has  been 


202      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

as  good  as  gold.  We  are  unalterably  opposed  to  every  measure 
calculated  to  debase  our  currency  or  impair  the  credit  of  our 
country.  We  are  therefore  opposed  to  the  free  coinage  of  silver, 
except  by  international  agreement  with  the  leading  commercial 
nations  of  the  earth,  which  agreement  we  pledge  ourselves  to 
promote;  and  until  such  agreement  can  be  obtained  the  ex- 
isting gold  standard  must  be  maintained.  All  of  our  silver  and 
paper  currency  must  be  maintained  at  parity  with  gold,  and 
we  favor  all  measures  designed  to  maintain  inviolably  the  obliga- 
tions of  the  United  States,  and  all  our  money,  whether  coin  or 
paper,  at  the  present  standard,  the  standard  of  the  most  en- 
lightened nations  of  the  earth." 

A  comparison  of  the  foregoing  text  with  the  draft  worked  up 
by  the  preliminary  conference  discloses  only  unimportant 
changes.  The  "free  and  unlimited  coinage  of  silver"  gets  along 
without  the  "and  unlimited."  The  draft  wants  an  interna- 
tional agreement  with  "the  commercial  nations  of  Europe," 
whereas  the  plank  is  not  satisfied  with  an  agreement  with 
anything  less  than  the  whole  earth.  The  plank  pledges  the 
party  to  promote  such  an  agreement,  and  the  draft  does  not. 
In  the  plank  "we  believe  that"  is  very  properly  omitted  before 
"the  existing  gold  standard,"  which  is  to  be  "preserved"  in 
the  plank  and  "maintained"  in  the  draft.  The  plank  does  not 
favor  the  use  of  silver  as  currency,  and  in  this  respect  it  is 
a  palpable  improvement  over  the  draft.  The  actual  wording 
was  the  result  of  the  scrutiny  and  cooperation  of  very  many 
minds;  and  on  the  whole  the  last  version,  the  one  actually 
presented  to  the  Convention,  is  the  best.  But  this  version  was, 
of  course,  the  result  of  the  closest  kind  of  criticism  applied  to 
the  original  McKinley  draft.  It  was  first  worked  over  by  the 
conference  of  Mr.  McKinley's  friends  and  reduced  to  the  form 
given  on  page  197.  This  form  was  placed  in  charge  of  William  R. 
Merriam,  the  only  man  participating  in  the  conference,  who  was 
also  a  member  of  the  Committee  on  Resolutions.  It  was  sub- 
mitted by  him  at  Mr.  Hanna's  request  to  the  chairman  of  the 
Committee  and  presumably  received  his  approval.  Mr.  Merriam 
is  the  connecting  link  between  the  preliminary  conferences  of 
Mr.  McKinley 's  supporters  and  the  Committee  on  Resolutions. 

Mr.  Foraker,  in  his  pamphlet  on  "The  Gold  Plank,"  published 


THE    CONVENTION   OF    1896  203 

in  1899,  asserts  that  the  last  draft  which  he  received  directly  or 
indirectly  from  Mr.  Hanna  did  not  differ  essentially  from  the 
form  originally  brought  to  him  from  Canton  by  Mr.  J.  K. 
Richards.  On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Merriam  states  explicitly 
that  he,  at  the  suggestion  of  Mr.  Hanna,  submitted  on  Monday 
evening  the  draft  containing  the  word  "gold"  to  Mr.  Foraker 
and  Senators  Lodge  and  Platt.  Senator  Platt  in  his  "Autobiog- 
raphy" (p.  325)  confirms  this  statement.  "That  night  (Mon- 
day) Governor  Merriam  came  to  Mr.  Platt  and  Mr.  Kohlsaat 
went  to  Mr.  Lodge  with  the  draft  of  the  original  Hanna  plank 
with  the  word  'gold'  inserted,  and  with  the  statement  that 
it  would  be  conceded."  Mr.  Kohlsaat  confirms  the  statement 
of  an  interview  with  Mr.  Lodge  on  Monday.  Mr.  Lodge  him- 
self testifies  that  the  gold  plank  was  finally  drafted  at  a  meeting 
of  the  sub-Committee  on  Resolutions  by  Mr.  Foraker,  Gov- 
ernor Merriam,  Edward  Lauterbach  of  New  York  and  himself. 
Senator  Proctor  and  Colonel  Herrick  corroborate  the  assertion 
that  the  draft  submitted  by  Mr.  Merriam  was  identical  with 
the  draft  upon  which  the  preliminary  conference  had  agreed 
three  days  earlier.  This  testimony  establishes  the  method 
whereby  the  original  draft  was  transmitted  to  the  Committee 
on  Resolutions;  and  it  justifies  the  inference  that  in  respect 
to  this  detail  Mr.  Foraker's  recollection  must  be  at  fault. 

The  Committee  on  Resolutions  is  technically  responsible 
for  the  plank,  and  to  a  certain  extent  was  actually  responsible. 
Most  assuredly  it  improved  the  phrasing  of  the  resolution; 
but  the  testimony  on  which  the  foregoing  narrative  is  based 
proves  that  the  Committee  merely  confirmed  a  decision  which 
in  substance  had  already  been  reached.  Not  until  Monday 
night  was  Mr.  Hanna  ready  to  have  the  matter  finally  settled. 
In  the  meantime  he  was  allowing  the  delegations  from  New 
York  and  Massachusetts  to  do  the  work  for  him  of  consolidating 
the  sentiment  of  the  Convention  in  favor  of  an  unequivocal 
declaration  in  favor  of  the  gold  standard.  Responsibility  for 
the  result  was  widely  distributed.  No  one  man  or  group  of  men 
can  claim  more  than  a  minor  share.  The  gentlemen  who  par- 
ticipated in  the  preliminary  conferences  and  who  secured  Mr. 
McKinley's  consent  to  the  insertion  of  the  word  "gold,"  played 
an  important  part,  but  even  if  no  such  conferences  had  taken 


204      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

place  the  Eastern  states  could  and  would  have  forced  a  declaration 
in  favor  of  gold.  The  party  had  become  more  united  on  the 
subject  than  its  leaders  realized,  and  there  was  a  general  and 
an  irresistible  convergence  towards  the  goal  of  a  single  standard. 
That  the  salutary  result  was  accomplished  without  a  more 
serious  bolt  on  the  part  of  disaffected  delegates  was  due  chiefly 
to  the  way  in  which  Mr.  Hanna  manoeuvred  to  get  the  Con- 
vention to  declare  itself  and  so  to  give  its  action  a  higher 
momentum  and  a  more  authoritative  force.  As  he  says,  "the 
whole  affair  was  managed  in  order  to  succeed  in  getting  what  we 
got,"  and  he  might  have  added  at  the  smallest  possible  expense. 

None  of  the  delegates  to  the  Republican  Convention  of  1896 
who  insisted  upon  a  declaration  in  favor  of  a  single  gold  standard 
realized  what  the  consequences  of  their  currency  plank  would 
be.  They  anticipated  a  certain  amount  of  disaffection,  but 
they  judged  that  the  Democrats  were  so  hopelessly  discredited 
that  they  could  afford  to  alienate  a  few  silver  states  in  the  Far 
West.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  resulting  bolt  of  the  Colorado 
delegates  and  others  did  not  look  serious,  and  the  Republican 
leaders  returned  to  their  homes,  satisfied  that  their  work  had 
been  well  and  safely  done.  But  their  satisfaction  did  not  last 
very  long.  The  subsequent  action  of  the  Democratic  National 
Convention  did  something  to  excuse,  if  not  to  justify,  Mr. 
McKinley's  dread  of  the  currency  issue.  For  a  while  it  looked 
as  if  the  very  means  taken  to  establish  the  gold  standard  might 
result  in  its  disestablishment. 

No  wonder  that  the  action  of  the  Democrats  at  Chicago  took 
every  one  by  surprise,  for  it  was  without  precedent  in  American 
political  history.  A  Democratic  administration  was  repudiated 
by  a  Convention  of  its  own  partisans.  No  attempt  was  made  to 
defend  its  chief  measures.  On  the  contrary,  the  repeal  of  the 
Silver  Purchase  Act,  which  had  been  accomplished  under  the 
leadership  of  a  Democratic  President,  was  violently  attacked. 
What  the  country  needed  was  not  less  silver  currency  but  more, 
and  the  best  way  to  get  it  was  to  take  down  the  bars  and  coin 
all  the  silver  offered.  The  nomination  was  bestowed  upon  a 
young  and  comparatively  unknown  man,  who  had  carried  the 
Convention  away  by  his  eloquent  denunciation  of  a  currency 
system  based  on  gold.  Thus  the  Democrats  refused  to  be  placed 


THE   CONVENTION   OF    1896  205 

on  the  defensive.  They  took  the  aggressive,  brushed  aside 
the  tariff  issue  and  placed  the  Republicans  on  the  defensive 
by  declaring  that  the  existing  gold  standard  must  be  abandoned. 
The  final  effect  of  their  action  was  to  set  up  against  a  rich  man's 
cure  for  the  business  depression  a  poor  man's  cure,  and  thereby 
to  convert  a  controversy  over  a  technical  economic  question 
into  a  sectional  and  class  conflict.  This  transformation  of  the 
issue  between  the  parties  had  such  momentous  consequences, 
not  merely  on  the  subsequent  campaign,  but  upon  the  personal 
career  of  Mark  Hanna,  that  in  the  sequel  it  will  have  to  be 
examined  with  some  care. 

On  the  day,  however,  that  Mr.  McKinley  was  nominated  it 
looked  as  if  the  nomination  was  equivalent  to  election;  and 
the  delegates  were  thinking  more  of  celebrating  their  perform- 
ance than  of  casting  gloomy  forebodings  towards  the  future. 
The  celebration  began  not  unnaturally  with  the  offer  of  con- 
gratulations to  the  hero  of  the  occasion,  who,  in  the  eyes  of 
many  of  the  delegates,  was  as  much  Mark  Hanna  as  it  was 
William  McKinley.  In  the  extent  to  which  Mr.  Hanna  had 
contributed  to  his  friend's  nomination,  the  delegates  recognized 
that  they  were  confronted  by  a  new  thing  under  the  sun  of 
politics,  and  behind  the  new  thing  was  a  new  man.  The  general 
appreciation  of  Mr.  Hanna's  performance  could  not  be  expressed 
with  entire  frankness,  but  during  the  regular  process  of  making 
the  nomination  of  Mr.  McKinley  unanimous,  it  did  receive  a 
certain  outlet.  The  official  report  reads  as  follows  :  "A  general 
call  from  all  parts  of  the  Hall  was  then  heard  for  Mr.  Hanna, 
who  finally  yielded  to  the  entreaties  of  the  audience  and  arose 
and  said:  — 

"'Mr.  Chairman  and  Gentlemen  of  the  Convention :  I  am 
glad  that  there  was  one  member  of  this  Convention  who  has  the 
intelligence  at  this  late  hour  to  ascertain  how  this  nomination 
was  made  —  by  the  people.  What  feeble  efforts  I  may  have 
contributed  to  the  result,  I  am  here  to  lay  the  fruits  of  it  at  the 
feet  of  my  party  and  upon  the  altar  of  my  country.  [Applause.] 
I  am  ready  now  to  take  my  position  in  the  ranks  alongside  of  my 
friend,  General  Henderson,  and  all  other  good  Republicans  from 
every  state  and  do  the  duty  of  a  soldier  until  next  November/ 
[Great  applause.]" 


206      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

Mark  Hanna  was,  however,  not  to  return  to  the  ranks  as  long 
as  he  lived.  He  was  undoubtedly  right  in  saying  that  McKinley 
had  been  the  choice  of  a  larger  number  of  Republican  voters  than 
any  other  candidate  :  but  no  one  knew  better  than  himself  that 
their  choice  might  not  have  received  effective  expression,  had  it 
not  been  reenforced  by  very  able  and  resolute  assistance  from 
Mr.  McKinley  himself  and  from  Mr.  McKinley's  "confidential 
friend,"  Mark  Hanna.  The  Republican  leaders  were  also 
fully  conscious  of  the  ability  with  which  the  canvass  had  been 
managed,  and  they  realized  that  even  though  Mr.  McKinley 
were  the  popular  choice  for  President  as  well  as  for  Republican 
nominee,  it  would  not  do  any  harm  to  lend  the  people  some  effec- 
tive help  in  making  their  preference  good.  Mr.  Hanna,  both 
by  his  personal  relations  with  the  candidate  and  his  proved 
ability  as  a  political  organizer,  was  marked  as  the  director  of 
the  campaign  of  1896.  He  was  immediately  selected  as  chair- 
man of  the  National  Committee,  which  was,  of  course,  absolutely 
in  accordance  with  Mr.  McKinley's  own  wishes  and  intentions. 
Instead  of  retiring  to  the  ranks,  he  became  the  field  general  of 
the  whole  army  —  a  position  for  which  his  peculiar  training  and 
gifts  had  made  him  extraordinarily  fit.  He  was  an  expert 
in  organization,  whose  success  in  business  had  been  based  upon 
his  ability  to  communicate  his  personal  energy  to  a  many-headed 
human  machine.  The  work  on  behalf  of  Mr.  McKinley's 
nomination  had  placed  him  closely  in  touch  with  local  political 
conditions  in  many  of  the  most  important  states  in  the  Union. 
Finally  he  had  an  instinctive  grasp  upon  the  human  factors 
which  at  once  complicate  a  political  situation  and  endow  it  with 
humor  and  life.  He  never  made  a  move  in  politics  without  feel- 
ing around  for  the  support  of  a  sufficient  body  of  public  opinion. 
He  had  just  given  an  excellent  illustration  of  his  gift  for  the 
most  effective  kind  of  political  management  by  arranging 
that  the  Convention  declare  for  the  single  gold  standard  in  a 
manner  which  caused  the  smallest  possible  friction  within  the 
party  and  the  smallest  possible  loss  of  prestige  to  Mr.  McKinley. 
The  campaign  was  to  afford  him  an  opportunity  of  so  managing 
that  the  claims  of  Mr.  McKinley  for  election  and  the  superiority 
of  the  Republican  platform  were  properly  placed  before  a  be- 
wildered and  hesitating  electorate. 


THE    CONVENTION   OF   1896  207 

The  ovation  tendered  him  by  the  Convention  was  the  first 
of  several  which  showed  the  popular  appreciation  of  his  con- 
tribution to  Mr.  McKinley's  nomination.  When  he  returned 
to  Cleveland,  he  was  greeted  by  his  townsfolk  as  a  conquering 
hero.  A  huge  crowd  met  him  at  the  railroad  station,  cheered 
themselves  hoarse,  tried  to  listen  to  a  few  words  of  thanks  and 
escorted  him  through  the  city  to  his  own  house.  On  the  margin 
of  the  crowd  was  an  old  friend,  who  had  not  done  as  well  in  the 
world  as  had  Mark  Hanna  —  Mr.  A.  B.  Hough.  When  Mr. 
Hough  saw  the  greeting  which  the  King-maker  was  receiving, 
he  began  to  wonder  whether  the  big  man's  head  would  be  turned, 
and  how  far  he  would  foregather  with  the  less  conspicuous  of 
his  former  friends.  He  soon  learned.  Mark  Hanna  spotted  Mr. 
Hough  as  he  rode  past  in  the  street  and  immediately  greeted 
him:  "Hello,  Hough!"  Then  inflating  his  chest  he  pointed 
to  himself  with  mock  pride  and  added:  "Big  Injun !  Me  Big 
Injun!" 

The  short  speech  which  he  made  on  this  occasion  deserves 
to  be  quoted  in  full :  — 

"Mr.  Chairman  and  Fellow-members  of  the  Tippecanoe 
Club :  This  unexpected  and  almost  overpowering  reception  robs 
me  of  what  little  power  of  speech  I  had  left.  I  had  little  idea 
that  anything  I  had  done  entitled  me  to  such  distinguished  con- 
sideration. True,  I  have  been  for  a  number  of  months  associated 
with  a  cause  dear  to  the  heart  of  every  honest  Republican 
in  Ohio  and  every  patriotic  citizen  of  the  United  States.  I 
entered  upon  that  work  because  of  my  love  for  William  Mc- 
Kinley.  No  ambition  even  for  honors  such  as  are  being  accorded 
to  me  on  this  occasion  prompted  me.  I  acted  out  of  love  for 
my  friend  and  devotion  to  my  country.  I  lay  no  claim  to  the 
honors  you  have  accorded  to  me.  I  could  have  done  nothing 
without  the  people.  All  I  have  done  is  to  help  the  people  in 
gaining  a  result  upon  which  they  were  united  —  the  accession 
to  the  presidency  of  William  McKinley." 

On  the  evening  of  Saturday,  June  27,  he  was  tendered  a 
dinner  at  the  Union  Club  by  his  lifelong  friends  and  associates. 
It  was  attended  by  all  the  men  in  Cleveland  among  whom  and 
with  whom  he  had  worked  for  forty  years,  and  the  warmth 
with  which  they  congratulated  him  on  his  success  must  have 


208      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

been  peculiarly  gratifying  to  a  man  like  Mr.  Hanna,  whose 
better  life  was  composed  so  essentially  of  personal  ties.  The 
dinner  was  private,  but  a  version  of  the  speech  with  which  Mr. 
Hanna  responded  to  the  congratulations  of  his  friends  was 
published  the  next  day.  All  agree  that  in  making  his  short 
reply  he  was  almost  overpowered  by  his  feelings.  "  He  said  that 
to  him  the  greatest  recompense  for  years  of  hard  work  was 
to  know  that  his  friends  indorsed  that  work.  He  had  acted 
simply  as  an  American  citizen  and  not  as  a  politician  or  'Boss.' 
He  was  not  a  politician  or  'Boss/  never  desired  to  be  one, 
never  would  be  one.  He  responded  to  the  voice  of  the  American 
people,  and  felt  that  in  his  final  success  in  the  nomination  of 
William  McKinley  his  work  was  to  a  great  degree  accomplished. 
When  the  question  of  the  candidacy  of  his  friend  was  broached, 
McKinley  had  said  in  his  conversation  with  him  that  he  would 
not  accept  the  nomination  subject  to  a  single  pledge  to  any 
man  of  office  or  remuneration.  Mr.  Hanna  told  his  friends 
that  the  conversation  had  made  of  him  a  better  man  and  had 
changed  the  current  of  his  thought." 


CHAPTER  XVI 

THE   CAMPAIGN   OF   1896 

WHEN  Mr.  Hanna  was  selected  as  chairman  of  the  Repub- 
lican National  Committee,  no  one  anticipated  how  grave  and 
difficult  his  task  would  be.  As  I  have  said,  the  action  of  the 
Democratic  Convention  took  the  country  by  surprise  and 
completely  upset  the  calculations  and  plans  of  the  Repub- 
lican leaders.  They  had  never  suspected  that  the  currency 
issue,  even  if  made  decisive,  would  entirely  supersede  the  tariff 
issue.  They  never  anticipated  that  by  virtue  of  the  currency 
issue  the  Democrats  would  be  able  to  make  political  capital  out 
of  a  period  of  economic  privation,  which  had  been  appropriated 
for  the  political  benefit  of  the  Republicans  and  particularly  of 
Mr.  McKinley.  A  few  weeks  before  the  Republican  Conven- 
tion it  looked  like  plain  sailing  for  the  Republican  nominee. 
A  week  after  the  Democratic  Convention  it  looked  as  if  by 
sheer  audacity  and  misguided  enthusiasm  the  Democrats  had 
obtained  the  right  of  way,  and  that  the  Boy  Orator  would  be 
carried  into  the  White  House  on  a  flood  of  popular  discontent. 

In  July,  1896,  no  one  could  gauge  accurately  the  actual  range 
and  force  of  this  discontent.  No  one  could  estimate  how  far 
its  ignorance  could  be  enlightened  or  its  impetus  diverted.  No- 
one  could  tell  with  any  confidence  what  effect  Mr.  Bryan's 
gallant  and  strenuous  appeal  to  the  American  people  would 
have  upon  the  actual  vote.  But  the  extreme  gravity  of  the 
situation  was  manifest.  Many  of  the  men  most  familiar  with 
the  situation  believe  that  if  the  election  had  been  held  in  August, 
or  even  in  September,  the  Democratic  candidate  would  have 
triumphed.  Mr.  Hanna  himself  inclined  to  this  opinion.  Mr. 
McKinley  was  gravely  concerned,  and  chided  certain  of  his 
friends  for  their  participation  in  the  decisive  definition  of  the 
currency  issue.  In  order  to  save  the  situation  enormous  exer- 
tions would  be  required,  as  well  as  a  plan  of  campaign  for  which 
p  209 


210      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS    LIFE   AND    WORK 

there  was  as  little  precedent  as  there  was  for  the  situation 
itself. 

What  took  the  Republican  leaders  by  surprise  was  the  peculiar 
effect  on  popular  sentiment  of  the  prevailing  hard  times.  For 
some  reason  the  business  depression,  coincident  with  Mr. 
Cleveland's  second  administration,  stirred  the  American  people 
more  deeply  and  had  graver  political  consequences  than  had  any 
previous  economic  famine.  The  panics  of  1837,  1873  and 
perhaps  even  of  1857  had  caused  as  much,  if  not  more,  suffering 
and  privation  as  did  the  panic  of  1893.  The  effect,  for  instance, 
of  the  panic  of  1873  upon  the  prevailing  rate  of  wages  was  more 
depressing  than  was  the  effect  of  the  panic  of  1893.  But  in  the 
earlier  years  the  political  consequences  were  not  serious  or 
dangerous.  The  result  in  1837  was  the  subsequent  election  of  a 
Whig  in  place  of  a  Democratic  administration.  The  result  in 
1873  was  the  subsequent  capture  by  the  opposing  party  of  the 
House  of  Representatives  and  Democratic  plurality  of  the 
popular  vote  in  the  presidential  campaign  of  1876.  On  each 
of  these  occasions,  also,  local  economic  heresies  jumped  to  the 
surface  in  the  Middle  and  Far  West.  But  in  neither  case  did 
these  local  economic  heresies  wax  into  a  national  issue  and 
become  a  grave  national  peril.  In  neither  case  did  it  result  in  a 
campaign  in  which  one  of  the  great  political  parties  declared  that 
the  effect  of  the  prevailing  economic  system  was  to  discriminate 
in  favor  of  the  possessor  of  loanable  capital,  and  against  the 
borrower,  the  wage-earner  and  the  producer.  The  fact  that  so 
threatening  an  economic  issue  could  be  nationalized  indicated 
the  ebullition  of  unsuspected  forces  in  American  public  opinion. 

The  public  opinion  of  the  time,  confused  and  ill-informed  as 
it  was,  saw  one  truth  very  plainly,  which  was  that  the  cause  of 
the  trouble  lay  deeper  than  the  administration  of  a  Democratic 
President  and  the  passage  of  the  Wilson  Bill.  It  turned  in  the 
beginning  instinctively  toward  Mr.  Bryan  because  he  provided 
the  people  with  an  apparently  better  reason  for  their  privations 
and  a  more  immediately  effective  cure.  They  felt  vaguely 
that  some  essential  economic  force  was  operating  to  deprive 
them  of  the  share  of  economic  goods  to  which  they  were  ac- 
customed ;  and  it  was  both  plausible  and  comforting  to  attribute 
that  malevolent  power  to  the  men  who  controlled  the  money 


THE    CAMPAIGN   OF   1896  211 

of  the  country.  Thus  it  came  to  pass  that  Mr.  Bryan's  speeches 
inevitably  assumed  more  and  more  the  character  of  appeals 
to  a  class  interest,  and  this  was  just  the  aspect  of  the  matter 
which  so  puzzled  and  alarmed  his  adversaries.  Not  since  the 
campaign  against  the  National  Bank,  had  any  issue  arisen 
which  encouraged  loose  talk  about  the  "Money  Power"  and 
which  made  the  poor  feel  that  the  rich  were  becoming  fat  at 
their  expense. 

Fortunately,  however,  Mr.  Bryan  was  appealing  to  and 
representing,  not  merely  a  class,  but  a  sectional  interest.  For 
reasons  already  indicated,  the  economic  dearth  had  caused  the 
utmost  suffering  and  privation  among  the  farmers  of  the  second 
tier  of  states  west  of  the  Mississippi.  These  people  had  gone 
heavily  into  debt  upon  the  basis  of  expectations  which  had 
been  frustrated  by  poor  crops,  low  prices  and  the  disturbed 
condition  of  credit.  They  turned  willingly  towards  a  change 
in  the  currency  system  which  might  provide  them  with  cheaper 
money.  But  there  was  no  reason  why  the  desire  for  cheaper 
money  should  appeal  either  to  farmers  who  were  relatively 
prosperous,  or  to  the  wage-earners  in  the  industries  of  the 
country.  After  the  first  burst  of  enthusiasm  had  been  spent 
over  a  candidate  and  a  platform  which  made  a  strong  bid  for 
popular  sympathy,  there  was  a  fair  chance  that  the  more  prev- 
alent interests  opposed  to  cheap  money  would  assert  them- 
selves. The  one  thing  necessary  was  to  establish  clearly  and 
to  popularize  the  real  meaning  of  the  demand  for  the  free  coinage 
of  silver  and  the  real  necessity  of  an  assured  standard  of  value. 
It  would  be  the  fault  of  the  Republicans  themselves  in  case  a 
purely  sectional  interest  were  allowed  to  obtain  a  national 
following  without  having  its  false  pretensions  exposed. 

The  manifest  duty  of  the  Republican  National  Committee 
was  that  of  explaining  fully  to  the  voters  the  meaning  of 
the  Democratic  platform  and  convincing  them  of  its  palpable 
error.  It  was  confronted,  that  is,  literally  and  exclusively,  by  a 
campaign  of  education,  or  better  of  instruction.  We  hear  a 
great  deal  about  campaigns  of  education,  in  many  of  which  the 
people  who  need  and  get  the  education  are  the  people  who  run 
the  campaign.  But  in  this  particular  case  a  confused  and 
hesitating  mass  of  public  opinion  merely  needed  elementary 


212      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

instruction.  The  prevailing  popular  discontent  was  receiving 
a  well-intentioned  but  erroneous  economic  expression.  A  sec- 
tional economic  interest  was  demanding  a  change  in  the  currency 
system,  which  from  the  point  of  view  of  sound  economics 
was  entirely  and  inexcusably  wrong.  Unlike  the  controversy 
between  free  trade  and  protection,  it  was  not  a  matter  of  two 
divergent  economic  policies,  each  of  which  expressed  under  cer- 
tain conditions  a  valid  political  interest  and  a  sound  economic 
truth.  It  was  a  matter  of  undermining  by  thorough  discussion 
and  explanation  the  foundations  of  a  dangerous  and  obvious 
mistake. 

Mark  Hanna  and  the  other  Republican  leaders  soon  under- 
stood the  kind  of  campaign  work  which  the  situation  demanded. 
They  decided  to  oppose  Mr.  Bryan's  personal  appeal  to  the 
American  people  with  an  exhaustive  and  systematic  educational 
canvass  of  the  country.  There  was  no  hesitation  and  doubt  as 
to  the  kind  of  strategy  needed.  The  difficulty  consisted  in 
collecting,  organizing,  equipping  and  distributing  among  its 
proper  fields  of  action  a  large  enough  army  to  carry  out  the 
strategic  plan.  The  prevalence  of  the  heresy,  the  confusion 
of  public  opinion,  the  uncertainty  as  to  the  actual  force  of 
the  Democratic  candidate's  personal  appeal,  and  the  general 
obliteration  of  the  usual  sign-posts  and  land-marks  made  it 
necessary  to  cover  an  enormously  extended  territory  with 
operations  devised  to  meet  both  the  local  and  the  general  needs 
of  the  situation. 

In  previous  campaigns  the  National  Committee  could  count 
upon  certain  states  as  indubitably  Republican  and  certain  other 
states  as  indubitably  Democratic.  Only  the  appearance  of  a 
fight  had  to  be  made  in  such  neighborhoods.  The  real  work 
was  done  in  half  a  dozen  doubtful  states,  and  the  Committee 
could  plan  with  some  assurance  the  methods  necessary  to  secure 
the  best  results  within  these  areas.  In  1896  all  this  was  changed. 
Of  course  some  states  could  still  be  placed  indubitably  in  one 
column  or  the  other,  and  there  were  a  few  states,  ordinarily 
doubtful,  which  were  sure  to  cast  their  vote  either  for  the 
golden-mouthed  or  the  silver-tongued  candidate.  But  no  one 
knew  where  certain  parts  of  the  West  stood.  The  Middle  West, 
the  Far  West  and  the  Pacific  Coast  were  all  more  or  less  in 


THE    CAMPAIGN   OF    1896  213 

doubt.  The  result  was  that  instead  of  a  campaign  carried  on 
in  a  few  dubious  states,  the  field  of  action  was  enlarged  to  in- 
clude half  the  country ;  and  within  this  enlarged  field  of  action 
an  unprecedented  amount  of  campaign  work  had  to  be  accom- 
plished. 

The  exigencies  of  the  campaign  necessitated  certain  depar- 
tures from  the  customary  methods  of  organization.  For  a  num- 
ber of  reasons  the  work  devolved  to  a  much  larger  extent  than 
usual  upon  the  National  Committee.  The  time  was  short. 
An  enormous  amount  of  properly  correlated  work  had  to  be 
accomplished  with  the  utmost  possible  efficiency.  Since  it 
was  to  be  a  campaign  of  instruction,  the  educational  agencies 
had  to  be  concentrated  upon  the  areas  in  which  they  could  do 
most  good,  and  they  had  to  be  supplied  with  really  instructive 
material.  The  State  Committees  could  not  be  trusted  with  as 
much  responsibility  as  they  had  been  accustomed  to  exercise. 
The  National  Committee,  instead  of  being  a  kind  of  central 
agency  of  the  State  Committees,  became  the  general  staff  of  the 
whole  army.  The  State  Committees  carried  out  its  orders. 
Such  was  the  inevitable  effect  of  a  campaign  which  stirred 
public  opinion  as  it  had  not  been  stirred  since  the  war,  and  which 
raised  an  issue  involving  not  merely  the  national  prosperity, 
but  the  national  honor  and  credit. 

It  was  also  a  result  of  naming  a  man  like  Mark  Hanna  as  the 
chairman  of  the  Committee.  He  was  not  merely  the  nominal 
head  of  the  campaign.  He  was  the  real  leader  of  the  Committee, 
the  real  architect  of  its  plans,  the  real  engineer  of  its  machinery 
and  to  a  certain  extent  the  real  source  of  its  energy.  In  the 
work  of  the  campaign  no  one  was  more  intimately  associated 
with  him  than  the  treasurer  of  the  Committee,  the  late  Mr. 
Cornelius  N.  Bliss,  and  no  one  testifies  more  cordially  to  his 
unremitting  labor,  his  unflagging  energy,  his  thorough  grasp 
of  the  work  in  all  its  aspects,  his  quick  insight  into  the  different 
needs  born  of  different  situations  and  his  fertility  in  meeting 
special  needs  with  special  measures. 

As  one  necessary  preliminary  measure  he  reorganized  the 
executive  offices  of  the  Committee..  In  the  past  its  methods 
had  not  conformed  to  sound  business  standards.  Mr.  Hanna 
introduced  a  better  system  of  bookkeeping  and  auditing, 


214      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

so  that  there  would  be  a  proper  account  kept  of  the  way  in  which 
the  funds  of  the  Committee  were  spent.  Another  innovation 
was  the  establishment  of  two  headquarters,  one  in  New  York 
and  one  in  Chicago.  In  the  beginning  he  anticipated  that  the 
Eastern  office  would  be  the  more  important,  but  the  large 
amount  of  work  which  was  necessitated  in  the  West  by  the 
disaffection  in  that  region  demanded  an  independent  organi- 
zation. As  the  campaign  developed,  this  double-headed  or- 
ganization was  justified  by  the  event.  Chicago  became  the 
real  centre  of  the  educational  part  of  the  campaign,  because  of 
its  proximity  to  the  doubtful  states. 

Mr.  Hanna  had  intended  to  divide  his  own  attention  about 
equally  between  the  two  headquarters,  but  as  the  campaign 
progressed  his  personal  responsibility  for  raising  money  to  pay 
the  expense  of  the  Committee  kept  him  a  large  part  of  the  time 
in  New  York.  He  needed,  consequently,  a  peculiarly  efficient 
local  organization  in  Chicago,  and  he  secured  it  by  associating 
with  him  in  the  work  unusually  able  men.  The  vice-chairman 
in  charge  of  the  office  was  Mr.  Henry  C.  Payne  of  Wisconsin, 
who  is  said  to  be  one  of  the  most  successful  campaign  managers 
of  that  period.  With  him  was  associated  Charles  G.  Dawes, 
who  had  proved  his  abilities  in  the  fight  made  by  McKinley's 
friends  for  Illinois,  Winfield  T.  Durbin  of  Indiana  and  Cyrus 
Leland,  Jr.,  of  Kansas.  The  subordinates  were  all  men  with 
whom  Mr.  Hanna  had  already  worked  and  in  whose  abilities 
he  had  confidence.  Major  Charles  Dick  was  secretary  to  the 
committee  and  the  working  head  of  the  organization.  William 
M.  Hahn,  formerly  chairman  of  the  Ohio  State  Committee,  was 
in  charge  of  the  Bureau  of  Speakers,  and  Perry  Heath  took  care 
of  the  press  matter.  In  New  York,  besides  Mr.  Cornelius  N. 
Bliss,  the  work  was  divided  among  Senator  Quay,  Joseph  Man- 
ley  of  Maine,  Powell  Clayton  of  Arkansas  and  N.  B.  Scott  of 
West  Virginia. 

One  of  the  major  necessities  of  the  campaign  as  a  whole  was 
the  adoption  of  some  measure  which  would  counteract  the  effect 
of  Mr.  Bryan's  personal  stumping  tour,  —  a  tour  which  covered 
a  large  part  of  the  country  and  aroused  great  popular  sympathy 
and  interest.  Of  course  the  countermove  was  to  keep  Mr. 
McKinley's  ingratiating  personality  as  much  as  possible  before 


THE    CAMPAIGN   OF    1896  215 

the  public;  but  the  Republican  candidate  cherished  a  high 
respect  for  the  proprieties  of  political  life  and  refused  to  con- 
sider a  competing  tour  of  his  own.  It  was  arranged,  conse- 
quently, that  inasmuch  as  McKinley  could  not  go  to  the  people, 
the  people  must  come  to  McKinley.  The  latter  abjured  the 
stump,  but  when  his  supporters  paid  him  a  visit,  he  could  ad- 
dress them  from  his  own  front  porch.  This  idea  was  employed 
and  developed  to  the  very  limit.  Several  times  a  week  dele- 
gations of  loyal  Republicans  came  to  Canton  from  all  points  of 
the  compass  to  pay  their  respects  to  the  candidate.  The  chair- 
man of  the  delegation  would  make  a  short  speech,  telling  Mr. 
McKinley  a  few  little  truths  with  which  he  was  already  familiar, 
and  Mr.  McKinley  would  answer  at  smaller  or  greater  length, 
according  to  the  importance  of  the  delegation  or  the  require- 
ments of  the  general  campaign  at  that  particular  juncture. 
These  delegations  were  not  mere  committees.  They  frequently 
included  some  thousands  of  people  and  had  to  be  carried  to 
Canton  in  trains  of  several  sections. 

It  is  characteristic  both  of  Mr.  Hanna  and  Mr.  McKinley 
that  every  detail  of  these  visitations  was  carefully  prearranged. 
The  candidate  was  not  taking  any  chance  of  a  reference  by  some 
alliterative  chairman  to  the  party  of  Silver,  Sacerdotalism  and 
Sedition.  In  the  first  place,  while  many  of  the  pilgrimages  were 
the  result  of  a  genuine  desire  on  the  part  of  enthusiastic  Re- 
publicans to  gaze  upon  their  candidate,  others  were  deliberately 
planned  by  the  Committee  for  the  sake  of  their  effect  both  upon 
the  pilgrims  and  upon  public  opinion.  But,  whether  instigated 
or  spontaneous,  Mr.  McKinley  always  had  to  know  in  advance 
just  what  the  chairman  was  going  to  say.  The  general  pro- 
cedure was  something  as  follows :  A  letter  would  be  sent  to  the 
National  Committee  or  to  Canton,  stating  that  a  delegation  of 
farmers,  railroad  employees,  cigar-makers,  wholesale  merchants, 
Presbyterians  or  what-not  would,  if  convenient,  call  on  Mr. 
McKinley  on  such  a  day.  An  answer  would  immediately  be 
returned  expressing  pleasure  at  the  idea,  but  requesting  that 
the  head  of  the  delegation  make  a  preliminary  visit  to  the  can- 
didate. When  he  appeared,  Mr.  McKinley  would  greet  him 
warmly  and  ask:  "You  are  going  to  represent  the  delegation 
and  make  some  remarks.  What  are  you  going  to  say  ?  "  The 


216      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

reply  would  usually  be:  "Oh  !  I  don't  know.  Anything  that 
occurs  to  me."  Then  Mr.  McKinley  would  point  out  the  in- 
conveniences of  such  a  course  and  request  that  a  copy  of  the 
address  be  sent  to  him  in  advance,  and  he  usually  warned  his 
interlocutor  that  he  might  make  certain  suggestions  looking 
towards  the  revision  of  the  speech. 

In  one  instance,  according  to  ex-Senator  Charles  Dick,  a  man 
took  his  speech  to  Canton,  all  written  out,  and  at  McKinley's 
request  read  it  aloud  to  the  candidate.  After  he  had  finished 
Mr.  McKinley  said:  "My  friend,  that  is  a  splendid  speech, 
a  magnificent  speech.  No  one  could  have  prepared  a  better 
one.  There  are  many  occasions  on  which  it  would  be  precisely 
the  right  thing  to  say ;  but  is  it  quite  suitable  to  this  peculiar 
occasion?  Sound  and  sober  as  it  is  from  your  standpoint,  I 
must  consider  its  effect  from  the  party's  standpoint.  Now  you 
go  home  and  write  a  speech  along  the  lines  I  indicate,  and  send 
me  a  copy  of  it."  In  this  particular  case,  even  the  second 
version  was  thoroughly  blue-pencilled  until  it  satisfied  the  exi- 
gent candidate.  Such  a  method  was  not  calculated  to  produce 
bursts  of  personal  eloquence  on  the  part  of  the  chairman  of  the 
delegation,  but  the  candidate  preferred  himself  to  provide  the 
eloquence.  Knowing  as  he  did  in  advance  just  what  the  chair- 
man would  say,  his  own  answer  was  carefully  prepared.  He 
had  secretaries  to  dig  up  any  information  he  needed,  but  he 
always  conscientiously  wrote  out  the  speech  itself.  If  it  were 
short,^\e  would  memorize  it.  If  it  were  long,  he  would  read  it. 
In  consequence,  his  addresses  to  the  American  people  during 
the  campaign,  beginning  with  the  letter  of  acceptance,  were 
unusually  able  and  raised  him  in  the  estimation  of  many  of  his 
earlier  opponents.  He  made  a  genuine  personal  contribution 
to  the  discussion  of  the  dominant  issue  and  extorted  increasing 
respect  from  general  public  opinion.  As  the  campaign  pro- 
gressed and  the  strain  began  to  count,  Mr.  Bryan's  speeches  de- 
teriorated both  in  dignity  and  poignancy,  while  those  of  Mr. 
McKinley  maintained  an  even  level  of  sobriety,  pertinence 
and  good  sense. 

Mr.  McKinley  was  only  the  leader  of  an  army  of  speakers 
who  were  preaching  the  same  doctrine  to  the  American  people. 
The  Republicans  had  a  great  advantage  over  the  Democrats 


THE   CAMPAIGN  OF   1896  217 

in  the  number  of  speakers  of  ability  at  their  disposal,  who  knew 
what  they  were  talking  about  and  believed  in  it.  The  National 
Committee  took  full  advantage  of  their  resources.  They  col- 
lected a  body  of  1400  campaigners,  paid  their  expenses  and  sent 
them  wherever  their  services  were  most  needed.  In  the  doubt- 
ful states  the  canvass  was  most  exhaustive  and  more  careful 
than  ever  before  in  the  history  of  the  country.  The  agents  of  the 
committee  penetrated,  wherever  necessary,  into  every  election 
district  and  held  small  local  meetings.  Hand  in  hand  with  these 
meetings  went  an  equally  thorough  circulation  of  campaign 
literature.  There  are  good  reasons  for  believing  that  this  work 
was  really  efficient.  Early  in  September,  for  instance,  a  care- 
ful canvass  of  Iowa  indicated  a  probable  majority  for  Bryan 
in  that  state.  During  the  next  six  weeks,  speakers  and  cam- 
paign documents  were  poured  into  every  town  and  village.  In 
October  the  results  of  another~canvass  convinced  the  Committee 
that  the  state  was  safe  for  McKinley. 

Even  more  elaborate  were  the  provisions  made  for  the  dis- 
tribution of  campaign  literature.  This  feature  of  the  canvass 
increased  in  importance  as  it  progressed,  and  finally  attained 
a  wholly  unexpected  volume  and  momentum.  The  greater 
part  of  the  responsibility  fell  upon  the  Chicago  headquarters, 
and  this  fact  made  the  work  performed  at  Chicago  relatively 
more  important  than  that  performed  in  New  York.  Over 
100,000,000  documents  were  shipped  from  the  Chicago  office, 
whereas  not  more  than  20,000,000  were  sent  out  from  New 
York.  In  addition  the  Congressional  Committee  at  Washing- 
ton circulated  a  great  deal  of  printed  matter.  The  material 
was  derived  from  many  sources, — chiefly  from  Mr.  McKinley 's 
own  speeches  and  from  those  which  various  congressmen  had 
made  at  different  times  on  behalf  of  sound  money.  A  pamphlet 
of  forty  pages,  dealing  with  the  silver  question  in  a  conversa- 
tional way,  although  one  of  the  longest  of  the  documents,  proved 
to  be  one  of  the  most  popular.  A  majority  of  these  pamphlets 
dealt  with  the  currency  issue;  but  towards  the  end  of  the 
campaign,  as  the  effect  of  the  early  hurrah  for  Bryan  and  free 
silver  wore  off,  an  increasing  demand  was  made  upon  the 
Ctommittee  for  protectionist  reading  matter.  Something  like 
275  different  pamphlets  and  leaflets  were  circulated,  and  they 


218      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

were  printed  in  German,  French,  Spanish,  Italian,  Swedish, 
Norwegian,  Danish,  Dutch  and  Hebrew,  as  well  as  English. 

The  National  Committee  had  this  reading  matter  prepared, 
but  it  was  usually  shipped  to  the  State  Committees  for  actual 
distribution.  To  a  constantly  increasing  extent,  however,  the 
documents  were  sent  direct  to  individuals  from  Chicago.  They 
found  by  experience  that  the  State  and  County  Committees 
frequently  did  not  cooperate  with  sufficient  energy  or  sufficient 
intelligence  in  the  distribution  of  the  reading  matter.  Two 
weeks  before  the  election,  so  it  is  said,  several  carloads  of 
pamphlets  had  not  been  unloaded  from  the  freight  cars  at  Co- 
lumbus, Ohio.  The  Committee  also  distributed  material  di- 
rect to  the  newspapers.  Country  journals  with  an  aggregate 
circulation  of  1,650,000  received  three  and  one-half  columns 
of  specially  prepared  matter  every  week.  Another  list  of  coun- 
try newspapers  with  an  aggregate  weekly  circulation  of  about 
1,000,000  were  furnished  with  plates,  while  to  still  another 
class  were  supplied  ready  prints.  Of  course  cartoons,  posters, 
inscriptions  and  buttons  were  manufactured  by  the  carload  — 
the  most  popular  poster  being  the  five-colored,  single-sheet 
lithograph  circulated  as  early  as  the  St.  Louis  Convention,  bear- 
ing a  portrait  of  Mr.  McKinley  with  the  inscription  underneath, 
"The  Advance  Agent  of  Prosperity." 

The  most  serious  problem  confronting  the  Committee  was 
that  of  raising  the  money  necessary  to  pay  the  expenses  of  the 
campaign.  Its  work  had  been  organized  on  a  scale  unprec- 
edented in  the  political  history  of  the  country.  The  cost  of 
its  organization  and  of  its  bureaus  of  printed  matter  and 
speakers  was  substantially  larger  than  that  incurred  during 
previous  campaigns.  It  was  not  only  conducting  an  unusually 
exhaustive  and  expensive  educational  canvass,  but  it  was  as- 
suming a  good  deal  of  work  usually  undertaken  and  paid  for 
by  the  State  Committees.  Unless  a  proportionately  large 
amount  of  money  could  be  raised,  the  operations  of  the  Na- 
tional Committee  must  be  curtailed  and  Mr.  McKinley's  chances 
of  success  compromised. 

The  task  of  raising  this  money  belonged  chiefly  to  Mr.  Hanna. 
He  had  planned  this  tremendous  campaign,  and  he  must  find 
the  means  of  paying  for  it.  Neither  was  it  as  obvious  as  it  is 


THE    CAMPAIGN   OF    1896  219 

now  how  this  was  to  be  done.  The  customary  method  of  volun- 
tary contribution,  helped  out  by  a  little  dunning  of  the  pro- 
tected manufacturers,  was  wholly  insufficient.  Money  in  suf- 
ficient volume  could  not  be  raised  locally.  The  dominant 
issue  endangered  the  national  financial  system,  and  the  money 
must  be  collected  in  New  York,  the  headquarters  of  national 
finance.  In  1896  Mr.  Hanna  was  not  as  well  known  in  New 
York  as  he  subsequently  became.  He  was  a  Middle  Western 
business  man  with  incidental  Eastern  connections.  Wall 
Street  had  not  favored  McKinley's  nomination.  Its  idea  of  a 
presidential  candidate  had  been  Mr.  Levi  P.  Morton.  It  re- 
quired some  persuasion  and  some  enlightenment  before  it  would 
unloosen  its  purse  to  the  required  extent. 

Mr.  James  J.  Hill  states  that  on  August  15,  just  when  the 
strenuous  work  of  the  campaign  was  beginning,  he  met  Mr. 
Hanna  by  accident  in  New  York  and  found  the  chairman  very 
much  discouraged.  Mr.  Hanna  described  the  kind  of  work 
which  was  planned  by  the  Committee  and  its  necessarily  heavy 
expense.  He  had  been  trying  to  raise  the  needed  money,  but 
with  only  small  success.  The  financiers  of  New  York  would 
not  contribute.  It  looked  as  if  he  might  have  to  curtail  his  plan 
of  campaign,  and  he  was  so  disheartened  that  he  talked  about 
quitting.  Mr.  Hill  immediately  offered  to  accompany  Mr. 
Hanna  on  a  tour  through  the  high  places  of  Wall  Street,  and 
during  the  next  five  days  they  succeeded  in  collecting  as  much 
money  as  was  immediately  necessary.  Thereafter  Mr.  Hanna 
did  not  need  any  further  personal  introduction  to  the  leading 
American  financiers.  Once  they  knew  him,  he  gained  their 
confidence.  They  could  contribute  money  to  his  war  chest,  with 
none  of  the  qualms  which  they  suffered  when  " giving  up'7  to 
a  regular  political  "boss."  They  knew  that  the  money  would 
be  honestly  and  efficiently  expended  in  order  to  secure  the  vic- 
tory of  Republican  candidates.  Never  again  during  the  cam- 
paign of  1896  or  during  any  campaign  managed  by  Mr.  Hanna 
was  the  National  Committee  pinched  for  cash. 

With  the  assistance  of  his  newly  established  connections  in 
the  financial  district,  Mr.  Hanna  organized  the  business  of 
collecting  contributions  as  carefully  as  that  of  distributing 
reading  matter.  Inasmuch  as  the  security  of  business  and  the 


220      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

credit  system  of  the  country  were  involved  by  the  issues  of  the 
campaign,  appeals  were  made  to  banks  and  business  men,  ir- 
respective of  party  affiliations,  to  come  to  the  assistance  of  the 
National .  Committee.  Responsible  men  were  appointed  to 
act  as  local  agents  in  all  fruitful  neighborhoods  for  the  purpose 
both  of  soliciting  and  receiving  contributions.  In  the  case  of 
the  banks,  a  regular  assessment  was  levied,  calculated,  I  be- 
lieve, at  the  rate  of  one-quarter  of  one  per  cent  of  their  capital, 
and  this  assessment  was  for  the  most  part  paid.  It  is  a  matter 
of  public  record  that  large  financial  institutions  such  as  the  life 
insurance  companies,  were  liberal  contributors.  The  Stand- 
ard Oil  Company  gave  $250,000,  but  this  particular  corporation 
was  controlled  by  men  who  knew  Mr.  Hanna  and  was  unusually 
generous.  Other  corporations  and  many  individual  capitalists 
and  bankers  made  substantial  but  smaller  donations.  Mr. 
Hanna  always  did  his  best  to  convert  the  practice  from  a  matter 
of  political  begging  on  the  one  side  and  donating  on  the  other 
into  a  matter  of  systematic  assessment  according  to  the  means 
of  the  individual  and  institution. 

Although  the  amount  of  money  raised  was,  as  I  have  said, 
very  much  larger  than  in  any  previous  or  in  any  subsequent 
campaign,  its  total  has  been  grossly  exaggerated.  It  has  been 
estimated  as  high  as  $12,000,000;  but  such  figures  have  been 
quoted  only  by  the  yellow  journals  and  irresponsible  politicians. 
A  favorite  estimate  has  been  $6,000,000  or  $7,000,000;  but 
even  this  figure  is  almost  twice  as  large  as  the  money  actually 
raised.  The  audited  accounts  of  the  Committee  exhibited  col- 
lections of  a  little  less  than  $3,500,000,  and  some  of  this  was  not 
spent.  Of  this  sum  a  little  over  $3,000,000  came  from  New  York 
and  its  vicinity,  and  the  rest  from  Chicago  and  its  vicinity. 
In  1892  the  campaign  fund  had  amounted  to  about  $1,500,000, 
but  the  Committee  had  finished  some  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  dollars  in  debt.  The  money  raised  in  New  York  was  spent 
chiefly  in  Chicago.  To  the  $335,000  collected  in  the  West 
$1,565,000  was  added  from  the  East,  thus  bringing  the  expendi- 
tures of  the  Chicago  headquarters  up  to  $1,970,000. 

The  way  in  which  this  money  was  spent  affords  a  good  idea 
of  the  scope  of  the  Committee's  work.  The  general  office  cost 
about  $13,000  in  the  salaries  of  the  staff  and  in  miscellaneous 


THE   CAMPAIGN  OF   1896  221 

expenses.  The  Bureau  of  Printed  Matter  spent  approximately 
$472,000  in  printing,  and  $32,000  in  salaries  and  other  expenses. 
The  cost  of  the  Bureau  of  Speakers  was  $140,000.  The  ship- 
ping department  needed  some  $80,000.  About  $276,000  was 
contributed  to  the  assistance  of  local  and  special  organizations, 
and  no  less  than  $903,000  to  the  State  Committees.  These 
figures  are  official  and  confirm  what  has  already  been  stated. 
The  distribution  of  pamphlets,  the  furnishing  of  speakers  and 
the  expenses  of  organization  account  for  half  the  expenses  of  the 
Chicago  headquarters.  The  State  Committees,  on  whom  de- 
volved the  work  of  special  canvassing  and  of  getting  out  the 
vote,  claimed  the  remainder.  A  large  appropriation  to  the 
Congressional  Committee  was  furnished  from  New  York. 
Towards  the  end  of  the  campaign  money  came  pouring  in  so 
abundantly  that  the  Committee  balanced  its  books  with  a  hand- 
some surplus.  It  was  urged  upon  Mr.  Hanna  that  out  of  this 
surplus  he  reimburse  himself  for  his  expenses  in  nominating 
McKinley,  but,  of  course,  he  refused  to  consider  the  sug- 
gestion. 

The  question  of  political  ethics  involved  by  the  collection  of 
so  much  money  from  such  doubtful  sources,  if  it  ever  was  a 
question,  has  been  settled.  American  public  opinion  has  em- 
phatically declared  that  no  matter  what  the  emergency,  it  will 
not  permit  the  expenses  of  elections  to  be  met  by  individuals 
and  corporations  which  may  have  some  benefit  to  derive  from 
the  result.  But  in  1896  public  opinion  had  not  declared  itself, 
and  the  campaign  fund  of  that  year  was  unprecedented  only  in 
its  size.  It  resulted  from  the  development  of  a  practice  of 
long  standing,  founded  on  a  real  need  of  money  with  which  to 
pay  election  expenses,  and  shared  wherever  opportunity  per- 
mitted by  both  political  parties.  Mr.  Hanna  merely  systema- 
tized and  developed  a  practice  which  was  rooted  deep  in  con- 
temporary American  political  soil,  and  which  was  sanctioned 
both  by  custom  and,  as  he  believed,  by  necessity. 

The  unnecessary  complications  of  the  American  electoral 
system,  requiring  as  it  does  the  transaction  of  an  enormous 
amount  of  political  business,  resulted  inevitably  in  the  develop- 
ment of  political  professionalism  and  in  large  election  expenses. 
In  the  beginning  these  expenses  were  paid  chiefly  by  candidates 


222      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

for  office  or  office-holders.  When  supplies  from  this  source 
were  diminished,  while  at  the  same  time  expenses  were  increas- 
ing, politicians  naturally  sought  some  other  sources  of  income, 
and  they  found  one  of  unexpected  volume  in  the  assessments 
which  they  could  levy  upon  business  men  and  corporations, 
which  might  be  injured  or  benefited  by  legislative  action.  The 
worst  form  which  the  practice  took  consisted  in  the  regular 
contribution  by  certain  large  corporations  to  the  local  machines 
of  both  parties  for  the  purpose  either  of  protection  against  legis- 
lative annoyance  or  for  the  purchase  of  favors.  During  the 
latter  part  of  the  eighties  and  the  early  nineties  this  practice 
of  bipartisan  contributions  prevailed  in  all  those  states  in 
which  many  corporations  existed  and  in  which  the  parties  were 
evenly  divided  in  strength. 

We  have  seen  that  an  essential  and  a  useful  part  of  Mark 
Hanna's  political  activity  had  been  connected  with  the  collec- 
tion of  election  expenses  for  the  Republican  party  in  Cleveland 
and  Ohio.  Under  prevailing  conditions  his  combination  of 
personal  importance  both  in  business  and  in  politics  was  bound 
to  result  in  some  such  connection.  But  he  had  never  been 
associated  with  the  least  defensible  phase  of  the  practice  — 
viz.  that  of  contributing  to  both  machines  for  exclusively  busi- 
ness purposes.  He  was  a  Republican  by  conviction,  and  he 
spent  his  own  money  and  collected  money  from  others  for  the 
purpose  of  electing  Republican  candidates  to  office.  As  he  be- 
came prominent  in  politics,  however,  it  so  happened  that  the 
business  interests  of  the  country  came  to  rely  more  and  more 
on  the  Republican  party.  It  was  the  organization  which  sup- 
ported the  protective  tariff  which  was  more  likely  to  control 
legislation  in  the  wealthier  states,  and  which  finally  declared 
in  favor  of  the  gold  standard.  The  Republican  party  became 
the  representative  of  the  interests  and  needs  of  American  busi- 
ness, and  inevitably  American  business  men  came  liberally  to 
its  support.  Their  liberality  was  increased  because  of  the 
personal  confidence  of  the  business  leaders  in  Mr.  Hanna's 
efficiency  and  good  faith,  and  because  in  1896  these  leaders, 
irrespective  of  partisan  ties,  knew  that  the  free  coinage  of  silver 
would  be  disastrous  to  the  credit  and  prosperity  of  the  country. 
In  that  year  the  Republicans  happened  to  be  entirely  right  and 


THE    CAMPAIGN   OF   1896  223 

the  Democrats  entirely  wrong  upon  a  dominant  economic  issue. 
The  economic  inexperience  and  immaturity  of  large  parts  of 
the  United  States  and  the  readiness  of  a  section  of  the  American 
people  to  follow  untrustworthy  leadership  in  economic  matters, 
had  given  legitimate  business  an  essential  interest  in  the  triumph 
of  one  of  the  political  parties.  Business  men  can  scarcely  be 
blamed  for  fighting  the  heresy  in  the  only  probably  effective 
manner. 

Mark  Hanna's  reputation  has  suffered  because  of  his  con- 
nection with  this  system,  but  closely  associated  as  he  was  with 
it,  he  is  not  to  be  held  responsible  for  its  blameworthy  aspects. 
All  he  did  was  to  make  it  more  effective  by  virtue  of  his  able 
expenditure  of  the  money,  of  his  systematization  of  the  collec- 
tions, and  by  the  confidence  he  inspired  that  the  money  would 
be  well  spent.  The  real  responsibility  is  much  more  widely 
distributed.  The  system  was  the  inevitable  result  of  the  po- 
litical organization  and  ideas  of  the  American  democracy  and 
the  relation  which  had  come  to  prevail  between  the  American 
political  and  economic  life.  As  soon  as  it  began  to  work  in 
favor  of  only  one  of  the  two  political  parties  it  was  bound  to  be 
condemned  by  public  opinion ;  but  the  methods  adopted  to  do 
away  with  it  may  be  compared  to  an  attempt  to  obliterate  the 
pest  of  flies  merely  by  the  slaughter  of  the  insects.  The  ques- 
tion of  how  necessarily  heavy  election  expenses  are  to  be  paid, 
particularly  in  exciting  and  closely  contested  campaigns,  has 
been  hitherto  evaded. 

Mr.  Hanna's  opponents  have,  however,  made  him  individually 
and  in  a  sense  culpably  responsible  for  a  traditional  relation 
between  politics  and  business.  The  economic  issue  dividing 
the  parties  in  1896  was  easily  perverted  into  a  class  issue,  and 
the  class  issue  was  exploited  for  all  it  was  worth  by  the  other 
side.  The  vituperation  which  the  representatives  of  the  poor 
are  privileged  to  pour  out  on  the  representatives  of  the  well- 
to-do  was  concentrated  on  Mark  Hanna.  He  became  the 
victim  of  a  series  of  personal  attacks,  which  for  their  persistence, 
their  falsity  and  their  malignancy  have  rarely  been  equalled  in 
the  history  of  political  invective.  Mark  Hanna  was  quoted 
and  pictured  to  his  fellow-countrymen  as  a  sinister,  corrupt  type 
of  the  Money-man  in  politics — unscrupulous,  inhumanly  selfish, 


224      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

the  sweater  of  his  own  employees,  the  relentless  enemy  of  or- 
ganized labor,  the  besotted  plutocrat,  the  incarnate  dollar-mark. 

The  peculiar  malignancy  of  these  attacks  was  due  partly  to 
certain  undesirable  innovations  which  had  recently  appeared 
in  American  journalism.  Mr.  William  R.  Hearst  was  begin- 
ning his  career  as  a  political  yellow  journalist.  He  was  the 
first  newspaper  publisher  to  divine  how  much  of  an  opportunity 
had  been  offered  to  sensational  journalism  by  the  increasing 
economic  and  political  power  of  American  wealth;  and  he 
divined  also  that  the  best  way  to  use  the  opportunity  would  be 
to  attach  individual  responsibility  to  the  worst  aspects  of  a 
system.  The  system  must  be  concentrated  in  a  few  conspicuous 
individual  examples,  and  they  must  be  ferociously  abused  and 
persistently  villified.  The  campaign  of  1896  offered  a  rare 
chance  to  put  this  discovery  into  practice,  and  inevitably 
Mr.  McKinley  and  Mr.  Hanna,  as  the  most  conspicuous  Re- 
publican leaders,  were  selected  as  the  best  victims  of  assault. 

The  personal  attack  on  Mark  Hanna  was  begun  somewhat 
before  Mr.  McKinley's  nomination.  Early  in  1896  Alfred 
Henry  Lewis  had  published  in  the  New  York  Journal  an  article 
claiming  to  be  an  interview  with  Mr.  Hanna  and  making  him 
appear  as  a  fool  and  a  braggart.  In  a  letter  to  the  owner  of 
the  Journal,  Mr.  Hanna  protested  vigorously  against  the  mis- 
representation, but  without  effect.  Later  the  personal  attack 
upon  him  was  reduced  to  a  system.  For  a  while  Mr.  Lewis 
appears  to  have  been  stationed  in  Cleveland  in  order  to  tell 
lies  about  him.  He  was  depicted  as  a  monster  of  sordid  and 
ruthless  selfishness,  who  fattened  himself  and  other  men  on  the 
flesh  and  blood  of  the  common  people.  This  picture  of  the  man 
was  stamped  sharply  on  the  popular  consciousness  by  the  power- 
ful but  brutal  caricatures  of  Homer  Davenport.  Day  after 
day  he  was  portrayed  with  perverted  ability  and  ingenuity  as 
a  Beast  of  Greed,  until  little  by  little  a  certain  section  of  public 
opinion  became  infected  by  the  poison.  Journals  of  similar 
tendencies  elsewhere  in  the  country  followed  the  lead  with  less 
ability  and  malignancy  but  with  similar  persistence. 

When  these  attacks  began  Mr.  Hanna  was  strongly  tempted 
to  bring  suit  for  libel  and  to  cause  the  arrest  of  Alfred  Henry 
Lewis;  but  after  consulting  with  his  friends  he  decided  that 


THE   CAMPAIGN   OF   1896  225 

Lewis  and  Hearst  were  aiming  at  precisely  this  result  —  with 
the  expectation  of  profiting  more  from  the  notoriety  and  the 
appearance  of  persecution  than  they  would  lose  in  damages. 
So  he  decided  to  disregard  the  attacks,  libellous  as  they  probably 
were,  and  he  continued  to  do  so  until  the  end.  But  he  was 
very  much  wounded  by  thenl  and  suffered  severely  from  the 
vindictive  and  grotesque  misrepresentation.  Like  all  men 
whose  disposition  was  buoyant  and  expansive,  and  whose  in- 
terests were  active  and  external,  he  was  dependent  upon  the 
approval  of  his  associates.  As  the  scope  of  his  political  activity 
increased,  the  approbation  which  he  wanted  and  needed  had 
to  come  from  a  widely  extended  public  opinion.  Hence,  while 
he  was  by  no  means  a  thin-skinned  man,  and  was  accustomed  to 
stand  up  under  the  blows  received  in  the  rough  and  tumble  of 
political  fighting,  he  could  not  but  wince  under  a  personal  dis- 
tortion which  was  at  once  so  gross  and  brutal,  and  yet  so  in- 
sidious and  so  impossible  to  combat.  He  had  been  brought  up 
in  the  midst  of  the  good-fellowship  characteristic  of  the  Middle 
West  of  the  last  generation.  He  was  used  to  a  social  atmosphere 
of  mutual  confidence  and  a  general  and  somewhat  promiscuous 
companionship.  He  was  accustomed  to  deal  fairly  with  other 
men  and  to  be  dealt  fairly  with  by  them ;  and  this  concentration 
upon  his  own  person  of  a  class  hatred  and  suspicion  wounded 
and  staggered  him,  until  he  became  accustomed  to  it,  and  was 
better  able  to  estimate  its  real  effect  upon  public  opinion. 

The  practice  of  attaching  to  a  few  conspicuous  individuals  a 
sort  of  criminal  responsibility  for  widely  diffused  political  and 
economic  abuses  and  evils  has,  of  course,  persisted;  and  in  so 
large  a  country  as  the  United  States  it  has  necessarily  been  per- 
formed by  newspapers  and  magazines.  The  people  who  have 
participated  in  this  pleasant  and  profitable  business  are  recom- 
mended to  ponder  the  following  sentence  from  Aristotle's  "Poli- 
tics," which  is  as  true  of  the  American  Democracy  as  it  was  of 
that  of  Greece.  "The  gravest  dangers  to  democracy,"  says 
Aristotle,  usually  occur  "from  the  intemperate  conduct  of  the 
demagogs,  who  force  the  propertied  classes  to  combine  by 
instituting  malicious  prosecutions  against  individuals  or  by 
inciting  the  masses  against  them  as  a  body." 

Whatever  one  may  think  about  the  rights  and  wrongs  of  the 


226      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

campaign  fund  of  1896,  it  must  be  admitted  that  it  served  its 
purpose.  If  the  campaign  of  instruction  had  not  been  organized 
on  the  scale  undertaken  by  the  National  Committee,  the  elec- 
tion of  Mr.  McKinley  might  never  have  taken  place.  The 
Committee  itself  had  for  a  long  time  no  confidence  in  the  success 
of  its  labors.  Not  until  early  in  October  did  they  begin  to  feel 
that  the  tide  had  been  turned.  The  decisiveness  of  the  result 
must  not  deceive  any  one  into  the  belief  that  it  was  inevitable. 
The  momentum  and  enthusiasm  attained  toward  the  middle 
of  October  by  the  campaign  on  behalf  of  Mr.  McKinley's  elec- 
tion was  the  result  of  the  vigorous,  exhaustive  and  systematic 
work  performed  by  the  National  Committee  during  the  two 
previous  months. 

Mr.  Hanna  had  a  method  of  conducting  a  political  campaign, 
not  unlike  that  of  a  coach  in  training  a  foot-ball  team.  His 
attempt  was  gradually  to  wind  up  public  opinion  until  it  was 
charged  with  energy  and  confidence.  The  different  moves  in 
the  campaign  were  planned  in  advance.  All  the  general  prep- 
arations were  completed  by  a  certain  date.  There  followed 
some  particularly  vigorous  special  onslaughts  on  particular 
states;  and  when  this  work  was  satisfactorily  accomplished, 
preparations  were  made  to  hold  the  ground  while  the  hard  work 
was  concentrated  on  other  less  doubtful  states.  The  execution 
of  this  general  plan  was  carried  out  with  the  utmost  care  and 
vigor.  The  whole  organization  was  inspired  by  the  energy  and 
confidence  of  its  chief.  Gradually  a  contagious  enthusiasm 
and  elan  was  communicated  to  the  entire  body.  The  different 
lines  of  work  converged  towards  the  end  of  the  campaign.  Their 
effect  was  cumulative,  and  their  ultimate  goal  a  condition  of 
complete  readiness  on  the  Saturday  night  before  election. 

In  the  year  1896  Mr.  Hanna  was  conducting  his  first  National 
Campaign,  and  he  was,  perhaps,  over-eager.  At  all  events  he 
pushed  his  preparations  somewhat  too  hard.  He  was  ready 
for  the  election  a  week  before  election  day,  and  he  feared  that 
he  could  not  hold  his  ground.  He  was  afraid,  that  is,  of  over- 
training ;  and  the  last  week  was  a  period  for  him  of  intense  un- 
easiness. And  he  might  well  be  uneasy,  because  the  country 
had  been  worked  up  to  a  condition  of  high  excitement.  By 
skilful  management  and  a  good  cause  the  hurrah  for  Bryan 


THE   CAMPAIGN   OF   1896  227 

had  been  converted  into  a  hurrah  for  McKinley.  Enthusiasm 
could  not  be  maintained  at  such  a  pitch,  and  if  it  began  to  sub- 
side, the  recession  might  attain  a  dangerous  volume.  His  fears 
proved  to  be  unnecessary.  The  electorate  had  not  only  been 
worked  up  to  a  high  state  of  enthusiasm,  but  they  had  been 
convinced.  The  victory  on  election  day  realized  Mr.  Hanna's 
highest  hopes  and  expectations.  No  President  since  U.  S. 
Grant  entered  office  supported  by  so  large  a  proportion  of  the 
American  people  as  did  William  McKinley. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

SENATOR   BY  APPOINTMENT 

THE  pleasantest  days  in  the  lives  of  American  political  leaders 
are  those  which  succeed  some  decisive  victory  at  the  polls. 
Public  opinion  takes  off  its  hat  and  bows  to  success.  It  likes 
to  crown  a  victor  with  laurels  and  strew  his  path  with  roses. 
For  the  time  being  the  press  and  the  public  are  far  more  in- 
terested in  good-naturedly  hailing  the  conqueror  than  they  are 
in  calling  up  memories  of  past  conflicts  or  in  anticipating  future 
troubles.  The  months  succeeding  Mr.  McKinley's  election 
were  no  exception  to  this  rule.  The  business  of  the  country 
had  been  relieved  of  an  oppressive  nightmare  and  a  really  dan- 
gerous threat,  and  public  opinion  had  nothing  but  kind  wishes 
for  the  men  who  had  accomplished  its  deliverance.  Mark 
Hanna  shared  with  Mr.  McKinley  this  warm  bath  of  popular 
approval  and  interest.  The  whole  country  began  to  recognize 
how  unprecedented  it  was  that  a  citizen  occupying  no  official 
position  and  without  any  personal  hold  on  public  opinion  should 
have  been  able  to  contribute  substantially  to  the  nomination 
and  election  of  a  President. 

The  way  in  which  Mr.  Hanna  was  regarded  at  this  moment 
by  an  able  and  sympathetic  fellow-Republican  is  very  well  ex- 
pressed in  the  following  extract  from  a  letter  written  by  Mr. 
John  Hay  to  a  friend  in  Paris.  "  What  a  glorious  record  Mark 
Hanna  has  made  this  year  !  I  never  knew  him  intimately  until 
we  went  into  this  fight  together,  but  my  esteem  and  admiration 
for  him  have  grown  every  hour.  He  is  a  born  general  in  politics, 
perfectly  square,  honest  and  courageous,  with  a  coup  d'ceil  for  the 
battle-field  and  a  knowledge  of  the  enemy's  weak  points  which 
is  very  remarkable.  I  do  not  know  whether  he  will  take  a 
share  in  the  government,  but  I  hope  he  will."  Many  other 
people  besides  Mr.  Hay  were  wondering  what  would  be  the 
future  of  this  man,  who  could  decide  to  make  a  President  and 

228 


SENATOR   BY   APPOINTMENT  229 

see  his  will  prevail.  The  expectation  was  that  he  would  enter 
the  new  Cabinet,  and  as  a  Cabinet  officer  would  continue  to 
act  as  his  friend's  political  adviser  and  manager.  It  was  the 
obvious  way  of  recognizing  his  past  services  and  securing  them 
for  the  future. 

So,  at  all  events,  thought  the  new  President  himself.  On  Nov. 
12,  just  a  week  after  his  election  was  assured,  he  wrote  to  Mr. 
Hanna  :  — 


DEAR  MR.  HANNA:  — 

"We  are  through  with  the  election,  and  before  turning  to  the 
future  I  want  to  express  to  you  my  great  debt  of  gratitude  for 
your  generous  life-long  and  devoted  services  to  me.  Was 
there  ever  such  unselfish  devotion  before?  Your  unfaltering 
and  increasing  friendship  through  more  than  twenty  years 
has  been  to  me  an  encouragement  and  a  source  of  strength  which 
I  am  sure  you  have  never  realized,  but  which  I  have  con- 
stantly felt  and  for  which  I  thank  you  from  the  bottom  of  my 
heart.  The  recollection  of  all  those  years  of  uninterrupted 
loyalty  and  affection,  of  mutual  confidences  and  growing  regard 
fill  me  with  emotions  too  deep  for  pen  to  portray.  I  want  you  to 
know,  but  I  cannot  find  the  right  words  to  tell  you,  how  much  I 
appreciate  your  friendship  and  faith.  God  bless  and  prosper 
you  and  yours  is  my  constant  prayer. 

"Now  to  the  future.  I  turn  to  you  irresistibly.  I  want 
you  as  one  of  my  chief  associates  in  the  conduct  of  the  govern- 
ment. From  what  you  have  so  frequently  and  generously  said 
to  me  in  the  past,  I  know  that  you  prefer  not  to  accept  any  such 
position,  but  still  I  feel  that  you  ought  to  consider  it  a  patriotic 
duty  to  accept  one  of  the  Cabinet  offices,  which  I  want  to  fill  with 
men  of  the  highest  character  and  qualifications.  I  want  you  to 
take  this  tender  under  the  most  serious  consideration  and  to 
permit  no  previous  expressed  convictions  to  deter  you  from  the 
performance  of  a  great  public  duty. 

"  May  I  not  expect  to  see  you  here  very  soon  ?  Please  give 
to  Mrs.  Hanna  and  the  family  the  sincere  personal  regards  of 
Mrs.  McKinley  and  myself. 

"Your  friend, 

"WILLIAM  McKiNLEY." 


230      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

The  Cabinet  position  which  Mr.  McKinley  had  in  mind  when 
he  wrote  this  letter  was  that  of  Postmaster-General.  Mr. 
Hanna  refused  it.  During  the  next  few  months  the  two  friends 
were  constantly  consulting  about  the  make-up  of  the  new  ad- 
ministration and  the  selections  for  the  higher  offices  within  the 
gift  of  the  President.  There  is  evidence  that  at  least  for  a  while 
Mr.  McKinley  continued  to  urge  Mr.  Hanna  to  accept  a  position 
in  his  Cabinet.  On  Feb.  18,  1897,  when  the  work  of  Cabinet- 
making  was  coming  to  an  end,  the  President-elect  wrote  to  Mr. 
Hanna:  "It  has  been  my  dearest  wish  ever  since  I  was  elected 
to  the  presidency  to  have  you  accept  a  place  in  my  Cabinet. 
This  you  have  known  for  months  and  are  already  in  receipt  of  a 
letter  from  me,  urging  you  to  accept  a  position  in  the  adminis- 
tration, written  a  few  days  after  the  election.  You  then  stated 
to  me  that  you  could  under  no  circumstances  accept  a  Cabinet 
place,  and  have  many  times  declined  both  publicly  and  per- 
sonally to  have  your  name  considered  in  that  connection.  As 
from  time  to  time  I  have  determined  upon  various  distinguished 
gentlemen  for  the  several  departments,  I  have  hoped  and 
so  stated  to  you  at  every  convenient  opportunity  that  you 
would  yet  conclude  to  accept  the  Postmaster-Generalship. 
You  have  as  often  declined,  and  since  our  conversation  on 
Tuesday  last,  I  have  reluctantly  concluded  that  I  cannot  induce 
you  to  take  this  or  any  other  Cabinet  position.  You  know  how 
deeply  I  regret  this  determination  and  how  highly  I  appreciate 
your  life-long  devotion  to  me.  You  have  said  that  if  you  could 
not  enter  the  Senate,  you  would  not  enter  public  life  at  all. 
No  one,  I  am  sure,  is  more  desirous  of  your  success  than  myself, 
and  no  one  appreciates  more  deeply  how  helpful  and  influential 
you  could  be  in  that  position."  There  follows  a  statement  of 
Mr.  McKinley's  decision  to  appoint  James  A.  Gary  of  Balti- 
more to  the  Postmaster-Generalship. 

The  reasons  for  Mark  Hanna's  persistent  refusal  of  a  Cabi- 
net position  are  sufficiently  obvious.  If  he  did  so,  he  would 
apparently  be  accepting  compensation  for  his  services  in 
contributing  to  his  friend's  nomination  and  election.  He  was 
willing  to  compensate  all  the  other  leading  contributors  to  that 
result,  but  he  refused  to  compromise  his  independence  by  accept- 
ing a  reward  for  his  services  from  the  man  he  had  served.  A 


SENATOR   BY   APPOINTMENT  231 

Cabinet  office  would  constitute  a  recognition  of  the  past,  but  it 
would  open  up  only  a  restricted  vista  of  future  accomplishment. 
If  he  was  going  to  become  anything  more  than  a  political 
manager,  he  must  seek  and  obtain  an  elective  office  of  some 
dignity  and  distinction.  Only  by  express  popular  approval 
could  his  prominence  in  American  public  life  become  au- 
thentic. 

There  resulted  from  this  sound  and  proper  decision  one  inter- 
esting consequence.  His  peculiar  abilities  and  his  life-long 
training  adapted  him  above  all  to  an  administrative  position. 
He  was  one  of  the  most  capable  organizers  and  executives  in 
American  public  life.  He  possessed  in  unusual  measure  the  gift, 
so  rare  in  public  officers,  of  infusing  the  energy  and  momentum 
of  his  own  will  and  plans  unto  his  subordinates.  Yet  he  never 
occupied  an  important  executive  office  in  the  American  govern- 
ment. His  peculiar  gifts  and  training  were  exercised  for  the 
benefit  of  his  friends  and  his  party,  but  they  were  never  exer- 
cised directly  in  the  interests  of  efficient  public  administration. 
The  reason  undoubtedly  was  that  he  was  not  the  man  to  take 
orders  from  anybody  else.  As  an  executive  he  could  not  be  a 
subordinate,  and  probably  he  would  never  have  accepted  a 
Cabinet  position  even  from  a  President,  to  whose  election  he 
had  not  himself  essentially  contributed. 

But,  as  is  intimated  in  Mr.  McKinley's  letter,  there  was  an 
office,  within  the  gift  not  of  the  President  but  of  the  General 
Assembly  of  his  own  state,  which  he  undoubtedly  wanted  very 
much,  —  the  position  of  Senator.  That  was  the  one  Federal 
office  which  carried  with  it  enough  political  and  social  prestige 
and  gave  him  enough  official  leverage  to  authenticate  his  peculiar 
unofficial  personal  influence.  Neither  was  his  desire  to  be 
Senator  the  result  merely  of  his  recent  success.  For  years  a 
Senatorship  seemed  to  him,  as  it  has  seemed  to  many  of  his 
fellow-countrymen,  the  prize  in  American  politics  best  worth 
having,  the  Presidency  of  course,  excepted. 

There  is  some  interesting  testimony  as  to  Mr.  Hanna's 
attitude  towards  a  seat  in  the  Senate.  In  January,  1892,  Mr. 
James  H.  Dempsey,  of  the  firm  of  Squire,  Sanders  and  Dempsey, 
who  had  long  been  Mr.  Hanna's  attorneys,  chanced  to  be  in 
Columbus  during  the  thick  of  the  fight,  which  Mr.  Hanna  was 


232      MARCUS    ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

conducting  for  the  purpose  of  reelecting  Mr.  Sherman  to  the 
Senate.  On  the  Sunday  preceding  the  nominating  caucus, 
the  politicians  had  for  the  most  part  gone  home,  and  the  day  was 
comparatively  quiet.  Mr.  Dempsey  spent  most  of  it  in  Mr. 
Banna's  room  at  the  hotel.  They  talked  confidentially  about 
many  things,  such  as  Sherman's  lively  and  persistent  ambition 
to  be  President  and  of  his  career  in  the  Senate.  During  their 
conversation  Mr.  Hanna  said,  "Jim,  there  is  one  thing  I  should 
like  to  have,  but  it  is  the  thing  I  can  never  get."  When  asked  what 
it  was,  he  replied,  "I  would  rather  be  Senator  in  Congress  than 
have  any  other  office  on  earth."  He  said  this  with  great  feeling, 
adding  that  he  had  never  betrayed  his  ambition  to  any  other 
person.  Mr.  Dempsey  inquired  why,  if  he  felt  that  way,  he 
did  not  seek  an  election.  Sherman  was  an  old  man,  and  could 
not  well  be  a  candidate  again.  With  his  position  in  the  Republi- 
can party  in  Ohio,  he  would  have  as  good  a  chance  as  any  one 
else  of  taking  Mr.  Sherman's  place.  Mr.  Hanna  replied, 
"Jim,  I  could  no  more  be  elected  Senator  than  I  could  fly." 

Mr.  Hanna's  reluctance  to  offer  himself  as  candidate  for 
Senator  in  1892  may  be  easily  explained.  The  Senatorship  was 
a  peculiarly  important  and  responsible  office.  He  had  done 
nothing  to  qualify  himself  for  such  a  distinction.  If  he  tried  to 
get  it,  he  might  have  been  obliged  to  use  methods,  similar  to 
those  which  other  business  men  had  used,  to  secure  the  necessary 
legislative  votes.  His  strength  in  politics  consisted  in  the  fact 
that  he  was  working  hard,  not  for  himself,  but  for  friends  who 
had  a  valid  claim  upon  public  recognition;  and  he  still  sin- 
cerely believed  that  his  best  chance  of  shining  in  public  life  was 
by  means  of  reflected  light.  Yet  when  President-elect  McKinley 
offered  him  the  job  of  becoming  one  of  the  official  reflectors  of 
the  light  radiated  by  the  highest  office  in  the  land,  he  refused, 
and  hankered  after  the  position  which,  five  years  before,  had 
seemed  beyond  his  reach.  A  Senatorship  need  no  longer  be 
considered  an  impossibility,  and  he  might  not  unreasonably 
believe  that  his  services  to  his  party  and  his  country  had  given 
him  a  sufficiently  valid  claim  even  upon  so  important  an 
office. 

But  how  was  he  to  become  Senator  ?  His  old  political  friend 
and  associate,  Mr.  Sherman,  occupied  one  of  Ohio's  seats  in  the 


SENATOR   BY   APPOINTMENT  233 

Senate.  His  term  expired  on  March  4,  1899.  The  other  seat 
was  or  would  be  filled  by  his  former  friend,  Mr.  James  B.  For- 
aker,  who  had  been  elected  in  January,  1896,  and  would  take 
office  on  March  4,  1897.  The  election  of  Mr.  Foraker's  suc- 
cessor was  still  five  years  away,  so  that  the  realization  of  his 
ambition  had  to  be  postponed  for  a  long  time,  unless  he  could 
occupy  Mr.  Sherman's  place. 

The  facts  that  Senator  Sherman  did  resign  his  seat  in  order 
to  accept  the  Secretaryship  of  State  and  that  Mark  Hanna  was 
appointed  his  successor  have  resulted  in  certain  ugly  charges 
against  Mr.  Hanna  and  Mr.  McKinley.  They  have  been  re- 
proached with  appointing  an  unfit  man  to  the  Secretaryship  of 
State  at  a  critical  moment  in  the  foreign  relations  of  the  country 
in  order  to  make  room  for  Mr.  Hanna  in  the  Senate,  and  they 
have  also  been  reproached  with  sacrificing  Mr.  Sherman's 
personal  interests  for  Mr.  Hanna's  benefit.  These  charges  have 
not  been  made  by  irresponsible  newspapers  or  political  enemies, 
but  by  serious  biographers  and  historians.  Mr.  Sherman  him- 
self finally  came  to  believe  that  he  had  been  ill-treated.  His 
life,  by  Senator  Theodore  E.  Burton  (p.  415),  contains  the  follow- 
ing passage:  "It  cannot  be  denied,  however,  that  he  left  the 
Cabinet  with  a  degree  of  bitterness  towards  President  McKinley, 
more  by  reason  of  his  practical  supersession  than  for  any  other 
reason,  but  also  with  the  belief  that  he  had  been  transferred  to 
the  Cabinet  to  make  room  for  another  in  the  Senate." 

The  facts  in  relation  to  Mr.  Sherman's  appointment  of  Secre- 
tary of  State,  in  so  far  as  they  are  now  accessible,  do  not  support 
the  claim  that  Mr.  Sherman  had  any  grievance  on  that  score. 
It  would,  of  course,  be  absurd  to  insist  that  Mr.  Sherman's 
transferral  to  the  State  Department  was  made  without  any 
consideration  of  the  desirable  vacancy  thereby  created;  but 
whatever  Mr.  Sherman's  later  attitude  in  the  matter,  he  was 
glad  at  the  time  that  his  Secretaryship  might  mean  Mr.  Hanna's 
Senatorship.  If  he  had  any  reluctance  in  resigning,  it  was 
because  he  feared  Mr.  Hanna  would  not  succeed  him.  These 
statements  are  all  established  by  Senator  Sherman's  own  corre- 
spondence. 

On  Nov.  13,  1896,  Mr.  Sherman  wrote  the  following  letter  to 
Mr.  Hanna :  — 


234      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 


DEAR  HANNA:  — 

"  I  was  very  much  disappointed  in  not  meeting  you  in  New 
York.  I  went  there  on  railroad  business  and  remained  down 
town  so  long  that  when  I  received  your  card  at  the  hotel  you  had 
gone  from  the  city.  You  have  got  the  reputation  of  being  a 
'  King-maker/  and  I  want  to  see  you,  not  to  help  me  to  be  a 
King,  a  President,  a  Senator  or  a  Cabinet  Officer,  but  as  an  old 
and  valued  friend,  whom  I  would  be  glad  to  help  and  encourage, 
if,  indeed,  he  is  not  already  so  well  situated  that  offers  and  public 
honors  will  not  tempt  him  to  exchange  his  position  as  a  private 
citizen  of  greatest  influence  in  the  United  States.  I  know  well 
enough  that  your  'head  is  level,'  and  if  you  wish  to  enter  political 
life,  I  would  like  to  be  one  of  your  backers.  Whether  you  do  or 
not,  I  would  like  very  much  to  have  a  talk  with  you.  Can't  you, 
when  next  you  visit  New  York,  come  to  Washington  and  stay  a 
day  or  two  at  my  house  ?  Mrs.  Sherman  will  take  good  care  of 
you. 

"Very  sincerely  yours, 

"JOHN  SHERMAN." 

The  foregoing  letter  contains  a  plain  intimation  that  soon  after 
the  election  Mr.  Sherman  had  some  specific  question  to  discuss 
with  Mr.  Hanna  relating  to  the  latter's  embarkation  on  an 
official  public  career.  Early  in  December  Mr.  Hanna  went  to 
Washington,  immediately  after  a  visit  of  several  days  with  the 
President-elect,  and  while  there  he  dined  with  Senator  Sherman. 
As  soon  as  he  returned  West  he  had  another  long  conference  with 
Mr.  McKinley.  We  can  only  surmise  what  happened  at  these 
interviews,  but  one  of  Mr.  Sherman's  friends  throws  some 
light  upon  Mr.  Sherman's  own  attitude  both  towards  his  trans- 
feral to  the  State  Department  and  the  consequences  of  such  a 
transferal.  Captain  J.  C.  Donaldson  was  Mr.  Sherman's 
closest  political  aide.  He  had  repeatedly  rendered  loyal  service 
to  Mr.  Sherman  during  the  latter's  Senatorial  campaigns.  The 
position  he  occupied  for  many  years  as  Secretary  of  the  Ohio 
State  Committee  with  particular  charge  of  the  election  of  candi- 
dates to  the  Legislature  made  his  services  during  a  Senatorial 
canvass  particularly  valuable.  His  helpful  participation  in  the 
close  fight  for  Mr.  Sherman's  reelection  in  1892  has  been 


SENATOR   BY  APPOINTMENT  235 

described  in  a  preceding  chapter.  According  to  a  letter  written 
by  Captain  Donaldson  to  Mr.  James  B.  Morrow,  the  following 
is  the  actual  sequence  of  events  leading  to  Mr.  Sherman's 
resignation. 

"  In  1897,  Mr.  Sherman  expressed  to  me  his  desire  to  return  to 
the  Senate,  should  the  Republicans  of  the  state  desire  it,  and 
asked  me  to  assist  him  in  ascertaining  the  drift  of  sentiment.  A 
few  of  us  sought  to  organize  a  committee  in  his  behalf  to  act 
centrally  at  Columbus.  Before  this  was  accomplished  General 
Dick,  then  Secretary  of  the  National  Committee,  requested  me 
to  go  to  Cleveland,  to  assist  in  the  work  of  the  National  Com- 
mittee. It  was  then  agreed  by  Mr.  Sherman's  friends  in  Colum- 
bus that  each  of  us  should  pursue  the  work  individually  until 
the  committee  should  be  organized,  and  that  I  should  pursue 
the  work  from  Cleveland.  Immediately  on  my  arrival  in 
Cleveland,  I  informed  both  Mr.  Hanna  and  General  Dick  what  I 
intended  doing,  and  they  both  cordially  assented  and  agreed  to 
facilitate  and  did  facilitate  my  work.  I  wrote  a  series  of  letters 
to  friends  in  every  county  in  the  state  and  sent  the  replies  with- 
out comment  to  Senator  Sherman,  so  that  he  might  be  informed 
at  first  hand  of  the  real  situation  in  the  state.  Just  at  that  time 
a  Cabinet  appointment  began  to  be  discussed,  and  very  many  of 
his  tried  and  true  friends  urged  him  to  round  out  his  career  in 
the  Cabinet.  I  was  doubtful  about  the  wisdom  of  his  abandon- 
ing the  race  for  the  Senate,  but  I  never  ventured  a  suggestion 
further  than  to  assure  him  that  I  thought  he  could  be  reflected. 
I  could  see  by  Mr.  Sherman's  letters  that  he  was  not  averse  to 
a  Cabinet  appointment,  and  finally  on  invitation  of  President 
McKinley  did  accept  the  Premiership  without  any  pressure  on 
Mr.  Hanna's  part." 

The  two  letters  from  Senator  Sherman  to  Captain  Donaldson 
read  as  follows :  — 

"Jan.  10,  1897. 
"CAPT  J.  C.  DONALDSON, 
"My  DEAR  SIR:  — 

"  Your  interesting  letter  of  the  7th  inst.  is  received  and  read 
with  attention.  I  am  very  glad  to  read  your  favorable  report 
of  the  condition  of  opinion  in  Ohio.  Still  I  feel  a  sense  of  duty 


236      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

to  McKinley  and  am  strongly  inclined  to  accept  his  offer.  The 
chief  impediment  in  the  way  is  the  fear  that  Governor  Bushnell 
will  not  appoint  Hanna  to  fill  my  unexpired  term.  It  seems  to 
me  that  I  ought  to  be  allowed  to  designate  my  successor  without 
at  all  affecting  the  question  of  who  should  be  elected  Senator 
for  the  term  commencing  March  4,  1899.  I  will  keep  you 
informed  of  any  change  of  condition  if  any  should  occur. 

"  Very  truly  yours, 

"JOHN  SHERMAN." 

"  Feb.  3,  1897. 
"CAPT.  J.  DONALDSON, 
"Mr  DEAR  SIR:  — 

"  Your  letter  of  the  1st  with  inclosures  is  received  and  has 
been  read  with  attention.  It  would  seem  as  if  Governor  Bushnell 
is  doing  all  he  can  to  make  it  difficult  to  reelect  him.  He  ought 
at  once  to  settle  the  question  of  my  successor,  and  any  other 
selection  than  Hanna  would  be  a  great  mistake.  I  will  be  glad 
any  time  to  get  clippings,  indicating  the  political  feeling  in  Ohio. 

"  Very  truly  yours, 

"JOHN  SHERMAN." 

The  overture  made  by  Senator  Sherman  to  Captain  Donaldson 
in  respect  to  a  canvass  for  his  reelection  was  itself  probably 
prompted  by  a  desire  on  the  part  of  the  Senator  to  find  out 
whether,  in  case  he  refused  a  Cabinet  office,  he  could  keep  his 
seat  in  the  Senate.  He  had  received  a  written  tender  of  the 
Secretaryship  of  State  about  January  1,  and  had  already  practi- 
cally decided  to  accept  it.  On  January  15  he  went  to  Canton 
and  made  his  acceptance  definite.  He  had  many  good  reasons 
for  being  very  glad  of  the  chance  to  end  his  public  career  as  the 
Premier  of  a  Cabinet.  He  had  been  elected  in  1892  only  by  a 
narrow  margin  and  after  a  hard  and  costly  fight.  He  could  be 
reflected  only  after  another  similar  fight,  and  he  had  no  longer 
the  strength  either  to  go  on  the  stump  or  to  manage  the 
details  of  such  a  campaign.  A  position  at  the  head  of  the 
Cabinet  looked  by  comparison  like  a  dignified  and  grateful 
refuge.  He  was  glad  to  accept  it,  and  he  was  glad  that  his  vacant 
place  might  be  filled  by  Mr.  Hanna.  If  his  retirement  from  the 
Senate  was  the  result  of  a  conspiracy,  whereby  he  was  kicked 


SENATOR    BY  APPOINTMENT  237 

upstairs  for  Mr.  Raima's  benefit,  the  victim  himself  was  one  of 
the  chief  conspirators. 

The  other  charge  —  that  the  President-elect  appointed  an 
unfit  man  as  his  Secretary  of  State  for  the  purpose  of  indirectly 
benefiting  Mr.  Hanna  —  is  more  serious.  It  has  been  stated 
in  the  following  words  by  Rear  Admiral  F.  E.  Chadwick  in  his 
history  of  the  "Relations  of  the  United  States  and  Spain."  He 
charges  (p.  490,  Vol.  1)  that  "Mr.  Sherman's  infirm  health, 
soon  to  become  painfully  evident,  combined  with  his  advanced 
age,  now  seventy-four  years,  made  the  appointment  one  to  be 
justly  criticised.  Mr.  Sherman's  appointment,  even  had  he 
been  in  vigorous  health,  and  equal  to  the  heavy  duties  of  his 
office,  was,  in  the  critical  condition  of  affairs,  on  account  of  his 
previous  pronounced  antagonistic  views  to  Spanish  procedure,  a 
blow  to  peace.  .  .  .  That  the  appointment  was  a  concession  to 
certain  political  adjustments  in  his  state  of  a  decidedly  personal 
nature,  did  not  add  to  its  political  morality."  The  accusation  is, 
consequently,  that  Mr.  McKinley  deliberately  appointed  as  his 
Secretary  of  State  a  man,  who  was  disqualified  for  the  office  both 
by  his  record  and  by  physical  infirmities,  so  as  to  supply  Mr. 
Hanna  with  a  seat  in  the  Senate. 

That  the  appointment  of  Mr.  Sherman  was  a  mistake,  there 
is,  of  course,  no  doubt ;  but  the  reasons  which  made  it  a  serious 
mistake  are  more  obvious  long  after  the  event  than  they  were  at 
the  time.  The  appointment  commended  itself  to  Mr.  McKinley 
as  one  that  from  many  points  of  view  was  extremely  desirable. 
Mr.  Sherman  was,  in  1897,  if  not  the  most  eminent  living  Amer- 
ican statesman,  at  least  the  statesman  with  the  longest  record  of 
useful  public  service.  His  name  carried  more  weight  than  that 
of  any  other  political  leader.  He  had  served  in  the  Senate,  not 
only  as  chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Finance,  but  also  as  chair- 
man of  the  Committee  on  Foreign  Relations.  Mr.  McKinley 
may  well  have  been  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  Mr.  Sherman  had 
fulminated  vigorously  and  ignorantly  in  the  Senate  about 
Spanish  dominion  in  Cuba.  He  had  every  intention  of  pre- 
serving peace  with  Spain,  and  he  would  not,  under  any  circum- 
stances, have  appointed  a  man  Secretary  of  State  who  in  his 
opinion  would  have  made  the  preservation  of  peace  more  diffi- 
cult. He  may  well  have  thought  that  he  was  calling  to  his 


238      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

assistance  the  one  American  statesman  whose  experience  in 
relation  to  the  foreign  affairs  of  the  country  would  make  his 
services  peculiarly  valuable. 

A  political  associate  of  Mr.  McKinley's,  whom  the  Presi- 
dent-elect frequently  consulted  about  the  effect  on  public  opinion 
of  appointing  different  men  to  his  Cabinet,  clearly  recollects  a  con- 
versation with  Mr.  McKinley  in  respect  to  Senator  Sherman's  des- 
ignation as  Secretary  of  State.  The  consideration  which  seemed 
to  be  uppermost  in  Mr.  McKinley's  mind  was  the  prestige 
which  he  hoped  would  accrue  to  the  administration  by  the  be- 
stowal of  the  premier  position  in  his  Cabinet  on  Mr.  Sher- 
man. He  had  been  elected  on  an  issue  involving  the  financial 
integrity  of  the  country  and  the  prosperity  of  general  business. 
He  wished  above  all  to  gain  for  the  administration  the  confi- 
dence of  the  business  interests,  and  in  his  opinion  Senator 
Sherman's  appointment  would  contribute  effectually  to  that 
result.  He  recognized  that  Mr.  Sherman  was  failing  in  health 
and  mental  vigor,  but  he  argued  that  inasmuch  as  the  country 
knew  nothing  about  it,  Mr.  Sherman's  name  would  lose  none 
of  its  value  to  the  administration.  He  expected  to  be  able  by 
giving  Mr.  Sherman  a  competent  first  assistant  Secretary  to 
obtain  the  benefit  of  the  Senator's  prestige  and  general  advice, 
while  at  the  same  time  keeping  the  departmental  detail  in  ca- 
pable hands. 

Such  arguments  may  well  have  carried  much  weight  with 
Mr.  McKinley.  He  had  never  been  much  interested  in  the 
foreign  affairs  of  the  United  States,  and  he  probably  failed  to 
understand  the  gravity  of  the  approaching  crisis.  He  did  not 
anticipate  that  within  a  year  the  country  would  be  on  the  verge 
of  war,  and  he  had  every  intention  of  preserving  peace.  His 
attention  being  concentrated  on  the  domestic  situation,  he  nat- 
urally made  his  appointments  with  the  object  chiefly  in  mind 
of  meeting  the  exigencies  of  the  country's  political  and  busi- 
ness condition.  He  made,  consequently,  grave  mistakes  in  ap- 
pointing his  Secretaries  both  of  Foreign  Affairs  and  of  War, 
but  the  mistakes  were  natural,  if  not  excusable.  He  would 
have  been  the  last  man  in  the  world  to  have  compromised  the 
success  of  his  administration  by  naming  weak  men  to  the  heads 
of  those  departments  —  in  case  he  had  realized  his  subsequent 


SENATOR   BY  APPOINTMENT  239 

need  of  unusually  capable  assistants  as  Secretaries  of  Foreign 
Affairs  and  of  War. 

Whether  or  not  the  arguments  in  favor  of  Mr.  Sherman's 
transfer  to  the  State  Department  would  have  prevailed,  in  case 
Mr.  McKinley  had  not  needed  Mr.  Hanna's  assistance  in  the 
Senate  and  in  case  Mr.  Hanna  had  not  wanted  a  seat  in  that 
body,  may  well  be  doubted.  But  admitting  that  a  Senatorship 
for  Mr.  Hanna  constituted  an  important  advantage  of  the 
arrangement,  there  was  nothing  reprehensible  about  such  a 
redistribution  of  official  positions  among  Mr.  McKinley's  sup- 
porters and  friends.  The  mistake  consisted,  not  in  the  ar- 
rangement itself,  but  in  failing  to  understand  the  paramount 
importance  at  that  particular  juncture  of  the  ablest  possible 
direction  of  State  Department.  Furthermore,  in  estimating  the 
probable  influence  of  Mr.  Hanna's  desire  for  a  seat  in  the  Senate 
upon  the  tender  of  the  Secretaryship  of  State  to  Mr.  Sherman, 
it  must  be  remembered  that  the  President  was  running  a  grave 
risk  of  transferring  Mr.  Sherman  to  the  State  Department,  while 
at  the  same  time  making  room  for  an  opponent  rather  than  his 
most  efficient  friend  in  the  Senate.  As  Mr.  Sherman's  letters 
indicate,  they  had  no  assurance  that  the  new  Secretary's  place 
could  and  would  be  filled  by  Mark  Hanna. 

The  Governor  of  Ohio  at  that  time  was  Asa  Bushnell.  He  had 
been  nominated  by  the  State  Convention  of  1895,  which  was 
controlled  by  the  opposing  faction  in  state  politics.  He  was 
far  from  friendly  either  to  the  President-elect  or  to  Mr.  Hanna. 
He  would  have  liked  to  interfere  with  their  plans.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  he  hesitated  a  long  time  before  making  the  appoint- 
ment, keeping  Mr.  Hanna  in  the  meantime  in  an  agony  of 
suspense.  Not  until  February  21,  two  weeks  before  Mr.  McKin- 
ley's  inauguration,  and  five  weeks  after  the  announcement  of 
Senator  Sherman's  appointment,  did  he  write  to  Mr.  Hanna 
announcing  the  latter's  appointment  as  Senator,  until  the  Legis- 
lature should  have  an  opportunity  to  act. 

"COLUMBUS,  February  21,  1897. 
"  MY  DEAR  MR.  HANNA  :  — 

"  When  Senator  Sherman  announced  his  intention  of  ac- 
cepting the  portfolio  of  the  State  Department  in  the  Cabinet  of 


240      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

President  McKinley,  I  deemed  it  best  not  to  make  an  an- 
nouncement as  to  my  action  in  the  matter  of  appointing  his 
successor,  until  the  vacancy  actually  existed.  However,  the 
interest  of  the  people  and  their  anxiety  to  know  what  will  be 
done  has  become  so  evident  that  it  now  seems  proper  to  make 
the  definite  statement  of  my  intentions.  I  therefore  wish  to 
communicate  to  you  my  conclusion  to  appoint  you  as  the 
successor  of  Senator  Sherman,  when  his  resignation  shall  have 
been  received.  This  information  I  have  understood  will  have 
been  in  accordance  with  your  desire,  it  having  been  stated  to 
me  that  you  wish  to  make  certain  arrangements  in  your 
private  affairs. 

"  I  wish  you  all  success  in  your  office  and  many  years  of  health 
and  happiness.     I  am 

"  Very  sincerely  yours, 

"ASAT.  BUSHNELL." 

The  reasons  stated  by  the  Governor  for  his  delay  were  disin- 
genuous. He  considered  seriously  the  possibility  of  a  number  of 
alternative  appointments.  It  is  stated  on  good  authority  that 
he  sounded  several  prominent  Republicans  in  the  effort  to  secure 
a  man  for  the  office,  whose  public  services  constituted  a  title  to 
the  distinction.  But  in  the  end  he  did  not  dare.  Mr.  Hanna's 
friends,  including  as  they  now  did  practically  all  the  influential 
business  men  in  the  state  and  the  majority  of  the  important 
political  leaders,  exerted  an  irresistible  pressure  upon  him.  He 
was  a  candidate  for  a  second  term  as  Governor,  and  he  was 
presumably  given  to  understand  that  in  case  he  refused  Mr. 
Hanna  the  appointment,  he  would  have  no  chance  of  renomina- 
tion.  Nevertheless,  strong  as  his  cards  were,  Mr.  Hanna 
doubted  up  to  the  last  moment  whether  he  would  get  his  Sena- 
torship.  Even  after  the  announcement  was  published,  the  issue 
of  the  commission  was  delayed.  Governor  Bushnell  did  not 
actually  place  it  into  Mr.  Hanna's  hands  until  the  morning 
after  McKinley's  inauguration,  March  5,  1897.  The  delivery 
was  made  in  person  in  the  parlor  of  the  Arlington  Hotel,  only 
a  few  persons  being  present.  The  commission  was  handed  over 
with  a  great  deal  of  formality,  and,  according  to  an  eyewitness, 
with  a  total  lack  of  cordiality  on  the  part  of  the  donor  and  of 


SENATOR   BY   APPOINTMENT  241 

the  recipient.  The  new  Senator  left  immediately  for  the  Capi- 
tol in  order  to  be  sworn  in.  Various  reasons  have  been  sug- 
gested for  the  Governor's  delay  in  issuing  the  commission,  of 
which,  perhaps,  the  most  plausible  is  that  Mr.  Hanna's  colleague 
wished  to  be  technically  the  senior  Senator  from  Ohio. 

Thus  the  beginning  of  Mr.  Hanna's  official  career  was  practi- 
cally coincident  with  the  beginning  of  Mr.  McKinley's  presi- 
dential term.  Mr.  Hanna  had  obtained  the  particular  status 
which  he  had  coveted  for  so  long,  and  which  was  the  one  office 
which  offered  to  him  a  larger  opportunity  than  ever  for  the 
exercise  of  his  abilities  as  a  partisan  executive,  as  an  organizer 
of  public  opinion  and  as  a  personal  political  force.  The 
remainder  of;  this  book  will  be  filled  with  the  story  of  the  way 
in  which  he  embraced  these  larger  opportunities  and  the  way 
in  which  he  fulfilled  the  responsibilities  imposed  upon  him  by 
his  peculiar  endowment  of  official,  extra-official  and  personal 
power. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

SENATOR  BY  ELECTION 

BEFORE  beginning  an  account  of  Mr.  Hanna's  official  career,  it 
will  be  convenient  to  anticipate  the  actual  sequence  of  events 
and  tell  the  story  of  his  first  election  to  the  Senate.  That 
election  did  not  take  place  until  over  a  year  after  his  appoint- 
ment, but  inasmuch  as  the  extraordinary  incidents  surrounding 
it  were  the  culmination  of  his  early  extra-official  career  in 
Ohio  politics,  they  can  best  be  related  in  the  present  sequence. 

When  Mr.  Hanna  was  appointed  Senator,  he  had  made  no 
definite  decision  to  seek  election  as  his  own  successor ;  but  after 
he  had  once  occupied  a  senatorial  seat  his  political  future  and 
prestige  came  to  depend  more  than  ever  upon  his  presence  in 
the  Senate.  To  have  occupied  such  a  position  by  virtue  of 
the  Governor's  selection  and  then  to  have  shirked  a  submission 
of  his  title  to  the  people  and  the  Legislature  of  his  state,  would 
have  been  an  act  of  weakness  and  cowardice,  of  which  he  was 
incapable  and  which  would  have  reacted  injuriously  upon  his 
personal  prestige.  Once  having  been  named  Senator,  he  was 
compelled  to  seek  the  confirmation  of  an  election;  and  once 
having  announced  his  candidacy  his  success  became  a  matter  of 
keen  personal  feeling.  For  the  first  time  in  his  life  he  threw 
himself  ardently  into  a  campaign  whose  object  was  the  fulfil- 
ment of  a  specific  personal  ambition. 

His  candidacy,  which  was  announced  in  the  most  public 
manner,  met  in  the  beginning  with  practically  no  open  hostility 
within  his  own  party.  The  opposing  faction  had  been  tem- 
porarily silenced  by  the  popularity  and  prestige  which  Mr. 
Hanna  had  obtained  as  a  result  of  the  successful  presidential 
campaign.  The  State  Convention  assembled  in  Toledo  on 
June  23,  1897.  Mr.  Hanna  was  in  complete  control.  The 
Convention  of  1895  had  established  a  precedent  in  Ohio  politics 
by  nominating  James  B.  Foraker  for  Senator.  The  Convention 

242 


SENATOR   BY  ELECTION  243 

of  1897  followed  the  precedent  and  submitted  Mr.  Hanna's 
name  to  the  voters  of  Ohio  as  the  Republican  candidate  both 
for  Mr.  Sherman's  unexpired  term  and  for  the  new  term  be- 
ginning March  4,  1899.  No  objection  was  made  to  this  action. 
On  the  contrary,  the  utmost  harmony  and  enthusiasm  prevailed. 
The  opposing  faction  was  placated  by  the  renomination  of  Asa 
Bushnell  for  Governor;  but  Charles  L.  Kurtz  was  retired  as 
chairman  of  the  State  Committee  and  one  of  Mr.  Hanna's 
friends,  Mr.  George  K.  Nash,  was  substituted  for  him.  Mr. 
Kurtz  resented  his  enforced  retirement,  and  for  this  and  other 
reasons  cherished  a  lively  personal  animosity  against  Mr.  Hanna 
which  was  later  to  bear  fruit. 

Mark  Hanna,  unlike  so  many  other  business  men,  did  not 
attempt  to  enter  the  Senate  by  the  back  door.  His  candidacy 
was  submitted  to  the  voters  of  Ohio  just  as  decisively  as  if  the 
"Oregon  System"  of  direct  partisan  primaries  had  prevailed  in 
that  state.  He  was,  of  course,  nominated  without  a  state- wide 
primary,  but  every  voter  in  Ohio,  in  casting  his  ballot  for  a  mem- 
ber of  the  General  Assembly,  knew  or  thought  he  knew  or  ought 
to  have  known  whether  he  was  voting  for  or  against  Mr.  Hanna. 
The  campaign  was  managed  with  his  customary  thorough 
attention  to  detail.  The  issue  was  deliberately  and  explicitly 
raised  all  over  the  state.  The  County  Conventions  which 
succeeded  or  followed  the  State  Convention  indorsed  his  candi- 
dacy. In  this  way  the  Republicans  in  eighty-four  out  of  the 
eighty-eight  counties  testified  to  their  approval  of  his  election. 
The  Republican  nominees  for  the  Legislature  were  obliged 
to  declare  publicly  whether  they  would  or  would  not  vote  for 
him.  His  candidacy  dominated  the  campaign  and  either  over- 
awed or  included  all  other  issues. 

The  situation  compelled  Mr.  Hanna  to  go  upon  the  stump  and 
meet  the  voters  of  his  native  state  face  to  face.  He  was  obliged 
to  risk  practically  his  whole  political  future  upon  the  impression 
which  his  person  and  his  words  would  make  upon  the  electorate, 
and  he  was  obliged  to  risk  this  attempt  without  any  previous 
training  or  experience  in  public  speaking.  His  skill  as  a  political 
manager  might  help  to  decide  the  result.  His  great  personal 
influence  with  the  leading  members  of  his  party  might  rally  to 
his  aid  the  most  effective  available  assistance.  Nevertheless  he 


244      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

stood  before  the  public  practically  alone  and  in  a  new  role. 
Heretofore  he  had  organized  the  expression  of  public  opinion 
and  exerted  his  influence  upon  it  indirectly  through  other  men. 
In  his  new  role  he  must  try  to  shape  it  directly  by  the  weight 
of  his  own  words  and  by  the  contagious  force  of  his  own  con- 
victions. He  must  conquer  popular  confidence  in  himself  as 
a  man  and  as  a  political  leader,  or  else  he  must  be  content  to 
become  a  sort  of  glorified  senatorial  "boss"  and  stage  manager, 
who,  no  matter  how  powerful  and  useful  he  were  behind  the 
scenes,  never  dared  to  make  a  public  appearance  except  as  a 
lay-figure  or  as  a  prompter. 

The  development  that  ensued  constituted,  perhaps,  the  most 
striking  single  incident  in  a  career  full  of  dramatic  surprises. 
Nothing  in  Mr.  Hanna's  previous  career  had  made  his  friends 
anticipate  that  he  would  make  a  success  or  obtain  any  influence 
as  a  public  speaker.  Mr.  James  H.  Dempsey,  indeed,  states 
that  many  years  before  he  had  been  surprised  at  the  vigorous, 
concise  and  logical  argument  which  Mr.  Hanna  had  made 
before  the  old  Board  of  Improvements  in  Cleveland  on  behalf  of 
certain  requests  which  had  been  submitted  to  the  Board  by 
the  street  railway  company;  but  Mr.  Hanna's  experience  of 
even  this  class  of  speaking  had  been  slight.  Such  arguments 
were  almost  always  turned  over  to  counsel.  Until  the  fall  of 
1897  his  appearances  as  a  public  speaker  had  been  limited  to 
the  few  words  he  had  said  in  response  to  the  ovation  tendered  to 
him  at  the  St.  Louis  Convention,  to  the  little  addresses  which 
he  had  made  to  his  neighbors  and  friends  after  his  return  from 
St.  Louis,  and  to  one  speech  of  less  than  ten  minutes  delivered 
in  Chicago  during  the  campaign  of  1896.  How,  then,  was  a 
man  in  his  sixtieth  year  to  break  through  the  habits  of  a  life- 
time and  learn  the  new  trick  of  talking  fluently  and  convincingly 
in  public?  It  would  not  be  easy  to  read  or  to  memorize  a 
carefully  prepared  speech,  but  on  the  stump  speeches  cannot 
or  should  not  be  prepared.  Success  on  the  stump  depends  far 
more  on  a  man's  ability  to  adapt  himself  sympathetically  to  a 
particular  audience  or  situation  than  it  does  upon  careful 
preparation  or  even  upon  his  general  ability  and  eloquence  as  a 
partisan  orator. 

It  was  really  fortunate  for  Mr.  Hanna  that  such  was  the  case. 


SENATOR   BY  ELECTION  245 

The  lack  of  preparation  characteristic  of  good  stump  speaking 
was  the  aspect  of  it  which  enabled  him  to  make  a  success.  He 
was  a  man  who  could  think  out  a  plan  of  campaign  but  not  the 
ramifications  of  an  idea  or  the  best  way  of  expressing  it.  Mrs. 
Hanna  contributes  an  account  of  her  husband's  one  attempt  to 
prepare  himself  for  his  new  job.  It  was  President  McKinley  who 
first  urged  upon  him  the  absolute  necessity  of  his  appearance  on 
the  platform  during  the  fall  campaign  of  1897.  "If  I  go  on  the 
stump,"  Mr.  Hanna  replied,  "I'll  never  be  elected.  I  can't 
stand  up  before  a  crowd  and  talk."  Mr.  McKinley  encouraged 
him,  advised  him  to  think  the  matter  over,  lock  himself  in 
his  library  and  write  at  least  one  speech,  which  could  be  changed 
from  time  to  time  to  meet  the  special  needs  of  particular  crowds. 
"When  you  have  written  it,"  said  Mr.  McKinley,  "fetch  it  to 
me,  and  I  will  look  it  over."  The  next  Sunday  Mr.  Hanna  du- 
tifully disappeared  into  his  library  after  supper  and  sat  up  until 
-midnight,  wrestling  with  the  composition  of  his  speech.  As 
he  finished  the  sheets,  he  put  them  into  a  drawer  of  his  desk, 
and  the  next  morning  after  breakfast  he  took  them  out  and  read 
them.  Mrs.  Hanna  says  that  she  will  never  forget  the  look  of 
utter  disgust  that  possessed  his  face  during  the  reading.  At 
the  end  he  tore  the  sheets  to  pieces  and  threw  them  into 
the  waste  paper  basket.  "  That, "  he  said,  pointing  to  the  waste 
paper  basket,  "is  the  weakest  and  most  sickening  stuff  I  have 
ever  read."  Mark  Hanna  had  to  do  things  in  his  own  way. 
He  could  not  make  or  write  a  speech  a  la  McKinley. 

Thereafter  he  never  prepared  a  speech  or  the  outline  of  a 
speech.  When  on  the  stump  he  never  carried  with  him  notes, 
references,  books  or  information  and  memoranda  of  any  kind. 
So  far  as  his  intimate  friends  could  judge  he  never  even  needed 
to  turn  over  in  his  own  mind  the  substance  of  what  he  proposed 
to  say.  His  private  secretary,  Mr.  Elmer  Dover,  states  that 
he  did  not  know  definitely  what  he  would  talk  about  until  he 
got  upon  his  feet.  Yet  he  was  always  ready  for  the  three  or 
four  speeches  that  might  comprise  the  day's  work,  and  each  of 
them  would  have  its  own  special  propriety  and  point.  The 
only  part  of  these  speeches  of  which  he  needed  some  conscious 
preliminary  control  was  the  very  beginning.  He  usually 
planned  the  first  sentence  or  two.  The  rest  of  it  followed  of  its 


246      MARCUS    ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS    LIFE    AND   WORK 

own  momentum,  just  as  a  conversation  may  take  its  own  course 
after  a  subject  has  once  been  introduced.  When  he  was  in 
good  form,  he  was  able  to  talk  on  in  this  way  for  an  hour  or  more, 
without  pausing  for  an  idea  or  scarcely  for  a  word. 

Naturally  he  did  not  acquire  such  facility  immediately  or 
without  an  introductory  period  of  distress.  In  the  beginning 
it  required  on  his  part  a  great  effort  to  face  an  audience.  Mrs. 
Hanna  says  that  on  the  occasion  of  his  first  few  political  speeches 
he  turned  pale  with  discomforture.  In  one  case  his  obvious 
distress  was  such  that  she  feared  he  would  faint.  For  a  long 
time  he  lacked  self-confidence  on  the  platform  and  dreaded 
when  the  moment  for  his  appearance  arrived.  During  his  first 
stumping  tour  in  the  fall  of  1897  he  began  with  little  speeches 
which  required  not  more  than  fifteen  minutes  to  deliver.  By 
the  end  of  the  campaign  he  could  run  on  for  half  an  hour 
without  effort  or  loss  of  energy.  The  time  came  when  he  began 
to  enjoy  it  and  take  pride  in  his  success.  After  a  long  period 
of  confinement  in  his  office  nothing  amused  or  rested  him  so 
much  as  a  week  on  the  stump.  It  was  exhilarating  without 
being  fatiguing.  It  benefited  him  in  much  the  same  way  that 
a  vacation  accompanied  by  hard  outdoor  exercise  benefited 
other  men.  It  stirred  him  up  mind  and  body,  and  he  returned 
home  refreshed  and  happy. 

Eventually  he  came  to  be  a  very  effective  public  speaker. 
His  success  was  caused  chiefly  by  the  sympathetic  understand- 
ing which  he  had  the  power  of  establishing  between  himself 
and  his  audience.  He  impressed  them  immediately  as  a  large- 
hearted,  genial  and  sincere  man,  wholly  without  pretence  and 
humbug.  They  felt  the  attraction  and  the  force  of  his  person- 
ality. He  talked  to  them  as  he  might  talk  to  a  group  of  friends, 
with  simple  words,  in  a  confidential  manner  and  on  occasions 
with  bursts  of  explosive  feeling.  He  did  not  need  to  prepare 
these  speeches,  because  they  consisted,  not  of  ideas  which  he  had 
derived  from  others,  but  of  a  few  deep  convictions  based  ex- 
clusively on  his  own  life  or  the  lives  of  his  own  people.  Every- 
thing that  he  had  to  say  was  on  the  top  of  his  mind.  His  public 
speaking  was  an  artless  revelation  of  his  own  personality  and  his 
own  experience,  which  accounts  for  the  ease  with  which  he 
took  it  up  and  its  popular  success.  His  audiences  were  for  the 


SENATOR   BY  ELECTION  247 

most  part  captivated  by  the  man,  and  they  were  easily  convinced 
by  a  group  of  ideas,  based  upon  so  familiar  and  typical  an  ex- 
perience. 

Beginning  merely  as  a  stump  speaker,  he  finally  found  it  ,as 
easy  to  talk  in  public  about  other  than  political  topics.  Several 
of  his  most  successful  speeches  had  nothing  to  do  with  politics ; 
but  whatever  the  subject,  the  substance  and  the  method  were 
always  the  same.  In  June,  1903,  he  had,  for  instance,  been 
asked  to  make  the  principal  address  at  the  seventy-fifth  anni- 
versary of  the  foundation  of  Kenyon  College,  and  he  had 
consented  to  do  so.  His  promise  had,  however,  escaped  his 
memory,  and  he  went  to  Gambier  on  the  appointed  day  merely, 
as  he  thought,  in  the  capacity  of  guest.  When  he  saw  his 
name  on  the  program,  he  was  very  much  embarrassed;  but 
he  rose  to  the  occasion.  His  speech,  which  was  as  usual  com- 
posed in  the  face  of  his  audience  and  under  the  stimulus  of  its 
presence,  has  been  described  by  those  who  heard  it,  for  the 
most  part  educated  and  trained  men,  as  adequate  and  excel- 
lent of  its  kind. 

Speeches  such  as  those  of  Mr.  Hanna  do  not  read  as  well  as 
they  sound.  They  had  a  colloquial  rather  than  a  rhetorical 
value.  They  were  deficient  in  structure,  in  sequence  and  even 
in  the  thorough  expression  of  a  single  idea.  They  rambled 
about  from  one  subject  to  another,  with  frequent  retracing  of 
paths  already  trod,  and  with  abrupt  chasms  between  one  part  of 
the  journey  and  the  next.  Particularly  in  the  beginning,  the 
wording  was  sometimes  clumsy,  and  the  meaning  of  particular 
sentences  obscure.  The  second  half  of  a  long  sentence  would 
sometimes  lose  any  sense  of  filial  responsibility  towards  the  first 
half.  But  with  practice  Mr.  Hanna  gradually  overcame  the 
most  obvious  of  these  faults.  He  could  never  make  a  coherent 
speech  culminating  in  a  climax.  When  his  feelings  were  very 
much  aroused,  his  expression  of  them  was  forcible  and  explosive 
rather  than  intense  and  dignified.  He  was  not,  that  is,  an 
orator  any  more  than  he  was  a  statesman;  but  his  style  of 
speaking  suited  his  own  audiences  and  message  better  than 
would  any  outbursts  of  sustained  and  impassioned  eloquence. 
His  own  personality  supplied  the  wire  which  tied  all  his  para- 
graphs and  sentences  together,  and  which  gave  consistency  if 


248      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

not  coherence  to  his  discourse,  and  force  if  not  light  to  his  ex- 
plosions. 

During  the  fall  of  1897  Mr.  Hanna  spoke  almost  every  day 
from  September  21  until  November  1.  His  tour  covered  a 
large  part  of  the  state  and  included  the  small  towns  as  well  as  the 
cities.  The  late  Senator  Frye,  who  shared  many  of  the  plat- 
forms with  him,  testified  that  day  by  day  Mr.  Hanna  gamed  in 
self-confidence  and  hi  his  mastery  of  his  hearers.  The  meetings 
were  unusually  large ;  but  during  the  first  tour  the  audiences  were 
not  particularly  enthusiastic.  They  seemed  to  be  prompted 
more  by  curiosity  than  a  cordial  and  sympathetic  interest. 
Two  years  later  when  Mr.  Frye  and  Mr.  Hanna  covered  sub- 
stantially the  same  territory  on  another  tour  their  audiences 
were,  according  to  Mr.  Frye,  both  larger  and  far  more  enthusias- 
tic than  they  had  been  in  1897. 

The  voters  of  Ohio  had  much  more  reason  in  the  fall  of 
1897  to  be  curious  about  Mr.  Hanna  than  to  have  confidence 
in  him.  He  was  one  of  the  best  advertised  men  in  the  country, 
but  the  people  did  not  know  him.  While  they  had  read  a  great 
deal  about  him  in  the  newspapers,  their  reading  probably 
misrepresented  him  and  predisposed  them  against  him.  He 
had  been  portrayed  by  his  opponents  as  a  monster  of  sordid 
greed,  and  as  the  embodiment  of  all  that  was  worst  in  American 
politics  and  business.  The  ordinary  man  had  no  convincing 
reason  for  entirely  rejecting  these  charges.  Even  though  he 
discounted  them  heavily,  he  might  well  be  prejudiced  against 
their  victim.  But  in  any  event  he  would  be  curious  to  see 
the  person  who  was  said  to  have  made  a  President,  and  who  was 
said  to  have  done  these  and  other  things  with  such  evil  intentions 
and  by  virtue  of  such  dubious  methods.  He  would  be  all  the 
more  curious  because  Mr.  Hanna  had  become  the  issue  of  the 
campaign.  The  candidate  was  being  bitterly  assailed  by  the 
Democrats.  All  the  regular  accusations  were  being  revived 
and  being  spouted  from  every  Democratic  platform.  Mr. 
William  J.  Bryan  was  pressed  into  service,  and  the  campaign 
of  the  preceding  year  was  fought  over  again  —  but  with  this 
difference:  the  new  campaign  became  essentially  personal. 
The  attacks  were  concentrated  on  the  man  who  had  acted  as 
general  during  the  previous  year;  and  the  hope  of  the  Demo- 


SENATOR   BY   ELECTION  249 

crats  was  that  by  the  defeat  of  Mr.  Hanna  they  could  claim  a 
reversal  of  the  earlier  verdict,  weaken  the  administration  and 
exclude  their  conqueror  from  public  life. 

I  shall  not  quote  from  the  speeches  in  which  Mr.  Hanna  very 
vigorously  defended  himself  and  in  his  turn  attacked  his  oppo- 
nents. The  course  of  political  controversy  during  the  next  few 
years  enabled  Mr.  Hanna  at  a  later  date  to  express  very  much 
more  definitely  the  group  of  economic  ideas  which  he  believed 
would  contribute  most  effectually  to  the  welfare  of  the  American 
people.  The  substance  of  his  characteristic  policy  was,  indeed, 
plainly  foreshadowed  in  these  earlier  speeches.  He  was  already 
declaring  that  the  dominant  purpose  of  the  government's  economic 
legislation  should  be  the  stimulation  of  business  activity,  and 
that  as  a  result  of  such  stimulation  prosperity  would  be  fairly  and 
evenly  distributed  throughout  the  whole  of  the  economic  body. 
He  was  already  claiming  that  the  Dingley  Law,  which  had  recently 
been  enacted,  had  actually  begun  the  work  of  rescuing  business 
from  the  depression  which  had  prevailed  since  1893.  But  the 
prosperity  actually  created  in  the  fall  of  1897  was  neither  suffi- 
ciently emphatic  nor  sufficiently  prevalent  to  permit  the  com- 
plete and  confident  development  of  the  foregoing  argument. 
And  we  may  postpone  a  completer  presentation  of  it  until  Mr. 
Hanna  could  claim  with  more  plausibility  and  conviction  that 
the  national  economic  policy  of  the  Republican  party  had 
actually  restored  the  American  people  to  a  condition  of  com- 
parative comfort  and  hope.  For  the  rest  the  general  issues 
involved  by  Mr.  Hanna's  personal  campaign  were  an  echo  of 
the  discussion  of  the  preceding  fall.  Mr.  Bryan's  participation 
in  the  discussion  and  the  renewal  of  his  pro-silver  proselytizing 
were  sufficient  to  effect  this  result. 

In  replying  to  the  personal  attacks  upon  himself  Mr.  Hanna 
always  spoke  with  moderation  and  good  judgment.  He  knew 
that  the  best  possible  answer  to  the  grotesque  misrepresenta- 
tion of  which  he  had  been  the  victim  was  merely  to  show  him- 
self on  the  platform  and  to  give  his  audiences  the  sense  of  his 
personality.  So  he  usually  began  by  saying  that  no  doubt  many 
of  his  hearers  had  come  to  see  whether  or  not  he  had  a  pair  of 
horns  actually  growing  upon  his  head.  Specific  charges  he 
would  deny  with  a  rough  indignation  that  always  made  an 


250      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

impression  upon  his  audience.  The  charge  against  him  of  which 
he  most  feared  the  effect,  but  which  was  most  easy  to  re- 
fute, was  that  in  his  own  business  life  he  had  sweated  his 
employees  and  opposed  their  organization.  Whenever  he  spoke 
in  a  town  in  which  his  own  firm  possessed  interests,  he  chal- 
lenged his  opponents  or  his  hearers  to  bring  forward  a  single 
case  in  which  any  one  or  any  group  of  his  employees  had  been 
ill-treated  by  his  firm.  He  could  always  show  that  he  had  paid 
the  highest  prevailing  wages,  and  that  his  laborers  were  neither 
crushed  nor  had  any  sense  of  being  crushed.  And  he  could 
show,  furthermore,  that  so  far  from  being  hostile  to  labor 
organization,  he  had  been  unusually  friendly  to  those  unions 
with  which  his  business  had  brought  him  into  contact.  The 
record  of  his  personal  relations  to  his  employees  was  in  every 
respect  thoroughly  good,  and  his  opponents  in  attacking  him 
on  that  score  were  trying  to  storm  his  intrenchments  at  their 
strongest  possible  point.  This  phase  of  the  campaign  was  a 
source  of  great  benefit  to  Mr.  Hanna.  When  the  canvass  was 
over,  his  associates,  who  had  been  watching  closely  the  effect  of 
his  public  appearance  upon  popular  opinion,  felt  sure  that  he  had 
won  out. 

The  event  justified  their  anticipations.  On  the  day  after  the 
election  Mr.  Hanna's  victory  appeared  certain.  The  Republi- 
cans were  conceded  a  majority  of  fifteen  on  the  joint  ballot, 
which  seemed  to  provide  a  margin  large  enough  for  all  probable 
contingencies.  Only  a  very  few  of  the  Senators  and  Assembly- 
men elected  had  not  been  specifically  pledged  to  Mr.  Hanna. 
The  name  of  no  other  Republican  candidate  had  even  been  men- 
tioned. It  looked  like  plain  sailing.  Yet  the  results  were  no 
sooner  announced  than  Mr.  Hanna  and  his  friends  began  to 
anticipate  trouble.  On  the  morning  of  the  election  day  the 
Cleveland  Leader  sounded  a  warning  against  treachery  and 
asserted  that  ballots  were  being  circulated,  indicating  the  method 
whereby  a  voter  might  defeat  Mr.  Hanna  and  elect  the  rest  of 
the  Republican  ticket.  It  was  remarked  after  the  returns 
came  in  that,  whereas  Governor  Bushnell  had  a  plurality  of 
about  28,000,  the  total  plurality  of  the  Republican  legislative 
candidates  was  less  than  one-third  of  that  figure.  A  day  or  two 
later  Mr.  Allen  0.  Myers,  a  prominent  Democratic  machine 


SENATOR   BY  ELECTION  251 

politician,  asserted  confidently  in  an  interview  that  Mr.  Hanna 
could  not  hold  together  the  Republican  majority  in  the  Legisla- 
ture. He  frankly  confessed  that  the  Democrats  had  planned 
to  sacrifice  their  candidate  for  Governor  to  the  capture  of  the 
Legislature. 

Mr.  Hanna's  friends  have  always  believed  that  his  enemies, 
even  before  the  election,  deliberately  conspired  to  defeat  him 
by  underhand  means.  They  had  submitted  to  his  appoint- 
ment as  Senator  because  they  felt  sure  that  in  the  year  of 
reaction  which  would  probably  follow  upon  a  great  Republican 
victory  he  could  not  be  elected.  When  they  found  as  a  conse- 
quence of  his  appearance  on  the  stump  that  he  was  becoming 
personally  popular  instead,  as  they  had  expected,  unpopular, 
they  tried  to  defeat  him  (so  it  was  charged)  by  trading  votes  for 
the  Governor  against  votes  for  legislative  candidates.  Of  course 
these  charges  were  never  proved,  but  they  were  made  plausible 
both  by  the  election  returns  and  by  the  alliance  between  the 
Democrats  and  the  Republican  malcontents,  which  was  publicly 
announced  after  the  election. 

Among  the  Republicans  the  leaders  in  this  conspiracy  were 
Governor  Asa  T.  Bushnell,  Charles  L.  Kurtz,  and  Robert 
E.  McKisson,  Mayor  of  Cleveland.  What  Mr.  Bushnell's 
grievance  was,  I  do  not  know.  He  was  a  well-to-do  manufac- 
turer and  a  man  of  many  excellent  qualities.  He  had  always 
been  associated  with  the  faction  in  Ohio  politics  inimical  to  Mr. 
Hanna;  but  that  fact  should  not  have  been  sufficient  to  justify 
an  honorable  man  in  assisting  so  dubious  a  conspiracy.  He 
may  have  resented  the  pressure  which  had  forced  him  to  ap- 
point Mr.  Hanna  as  Senator  and  have  resolved  that  his  ap- 
pointee should  be  succeeded  by  another  man.  But  during  the 
canvass  he  had  spoken  from  the  same  platform  as  Mr.  Hanna 
and  had  both  tacitly  and  explicitly  approved  him  as  the  regular 
Republican  candidate  for  Senator.  Nevertheless  the  day  after 
the  election  he  announced  that  a  Republican  would  be  elected 
Senator,  but  carefully  eschewed  the  mention  of  Mr.  Raima's 
name  —  indicating  that  his  line  of  action  had  already  been 
chosen.  Later  he  appointed  to  the  position  of  Oil  Inspector 
Charles  L.  Kurtz,  who  was  the  leader  of  the  Republican  mal- 
contents. Mr.  Kurtz  had  a  personal  grievance  against  Mr. 


252      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

Hanna,  which  is  said  to  have  been  based  on  a  misunder- 
standing. 

Neither  the  Governor  nor  Mr.  Kurtz,  however,  could  have 
done  anything  to  endanger  Mr.  Raima's  election,  had  they  not 
been  aided  by  the  local  political  situation  in  the  two  largest 
cities  in  the  state.  The  Mayor  of  Cleveland  at  that  time  was 
Robert  E.  McKisson.  His  first  election  had  taken  place  in  the 
spring  of  1895,  and  was  the  result  of  one  of  those  independent 
movements  within  the  local  organization  which  so  frequently 
disconcerted  the  plans  of  the  regular  Republican  machine  in 
Cleveland.  McKisson  had  requested  Mr.  Hanna's  support  for 
his  candidacy  and  had  been  sharply  turned  down,  because  in 
Mr.  Hanna's  opinion  he  had  done  nothing  to  entitle  him  to  so 
responsible  a  position.  He  was  nominated  at  the  primary  in 
spite  of  Mr.  Hanna's  opposition  and  had  been  elected.  Judging 
from  contemporary  newspaper  comments,  he  began  by  being  a 
fairly  good  mayor,  but  later  he  sought  to  build  up  a  personal 
machine  at  the  expense  of  the  city  administration.  He  was  re- 
elected  in  1897,  but  in  the  meantime  he  had  become  very  much 
disliked  by  the  prominent  business  men  of  Cleveland.  McKis- 
son on  his  side  had  always  retained  a  lively  personal  animosity 
against  Mr.  Hanna  —  although  his  ill-feeling  had  not  prevented 
him  from  speaking  from  the  same  platform  as  Mr.  Hanna  and 
recommending  the  latter's  election.  He  himself  had  never  been 
mentioned  as  a  senatorial  candidate.  He  was  still  very  power- 
ful in  Cuyahoga  County  and  could  control  the  votes  of  three 
Republican  legislators. 

The  situation  in  Cincinnati  and  Hamilton  County  was  differ- 
ent but  equally  dangerous.  A  combination  had  taken  place 
between  the  Democrats  and  the  independent  Republicans  for 
the  purpose  of  beating  the  local  Republican  machine,  headed  by 
"Boss"  Cox.  A  joint  legislative  ticket  had  been  nominated, 
and  there  had  been  elected  some  few  legislative  candidates  who 
were  really  "Silver  Republicans,"  and  who  were  not  pledged  to 
support  Mr.  Hanna.  The  chief  interest  of  these  men  was  to 
secure  the  passage  of  certain  legislation  which  would  help  them 
in  their  fight  against  the  local  machine ;  but  while  not  pledged  to 
Mr.  Hanna,  they  had  not  entered  into  any  alliance  with  his 
enemies. 


SENATOR   BY   ELECTION  253 

It  soon  became  apparent  that  considering  the  probable 
strength  of  Mr.  Hanna's  opponents,  he  could  not  be  elected 
without  the  support  of  certain  of  these  independent  Republicans 
from  Hamilton  County.  Some  weeks  before  the  Legislature 
assembled,  Mr.  James  R.  Garfield,  Senator  from  Lake  County, 
went  to  Cincinnati  at  Mr.  Hanna's  request  in  order  to  interview 
these  gentlemen  and  see  what  could  be  done.  In  that  city  the 
leaders  in  the  Republican  revolt  against  the  machine  were 
Edward  O.  Eshelby,  publisher  of  the  Commercial  Tribune,  and 
Judge  Goebel.  Through  these  gentlemen  a  meeting  was  ar- 
ranged with  Senator  Voight,  who  was  the  Republican  member  of 
the  senatorial  delegation  from  Hamilton  County.  Mr.  Garfield 
is  not  sure  whether  an  Assemblyman  named  Charles  F.  Droste, 
who  was  a  "Silver  Republican"  by  conviction,  was  present  or 
not.  The  net  result  of  this  interview  was  neither  entirely  dis- 
couraging nor  entirely  reassuring.  Senator  Voight  stated  that 
while  his  personal  feelings  were  favorable  to  Mr.  Hanna  he  did 
not  like  the  latter's  alliance  with  Cox  before  the  election.  He 
made  it  plain  that  his  first  interest  was  to  obtain  the  anti- 
machine  legislation  desired  by  the  independent  Republican 
movement,  and  he  would  give  no  definite  assurances  of  coopera- 
tion. Nevertheless  Mr.  Garfield  returned  to  Cleveland  with 
the  impression  that  Senator  Voight  would  join  the  Hanna 
Republicans  in  organizing  the  Senate.  He  was  not  sure  about 
Droste,  the  " Silver  Republican" ;  and  as  to  the  other  doubtful 
member  of  the  delegation  from  Hamilton  County,  a  druggist 
named  John  C.  Otis,  who  had  been  outspoken  against  Mr.  Hanna, 
he  never  had  any  expectation  of  securing  the  man's  support. 

As  the  time  for  the  meeting  of  the  Legislature  drew  near,  it 
became  definitely  known  that  two  Assemblymen  from  Cuyahoga 
County,  Mason  and  Bramley,  would  oppose  Mr.  Hanna.  Both 
of  these  men  had  been  pledged  before  the  election  to  vote  for 
him ;  but  in  one  way  or  another  they  were  induced  by  Mayor 
McKisson  to  repudiate  their  pledges.  The  Senator  from  Cuya- 
hoga County,  Vernon  H.  Burke,  was  non-committal,  but  it  was 
feared  that  he  also  would  violate  a  similar  pledge.  A  week  be- 
fore the  date  of  meeting  Mr.  Hanna  himself  went  to  Columbus 
and  opened  headquarters  at  the  Neil  House.  He  had  with  him  as 
assistants,  not  merely  his  personal  supporters  in  and  out  of  the 


254      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

Legislature,  but  prominent  Republicans  like  George  K.  Nash, 
Charles  Grosvenor  and  his  counsel,  Mr.  Andrew  Squire.  Mr. 
Theodore  E.  Burton  and  many  personal  friends  from  Cleveland 
also  went  to  Columbus  to  work  in  Mr.  Hanna's  interest.  By 
this  time  they  could  count  noses  with  some  accuracy,  and  the 
result  looked  very  dubious.  Governor  Bushnell  was  using  the 
state  patronage  to  beat  Mr.  Hanna,  and  a  number  of  more  or 
less  prominent  Republicans  from  different  parts  of  the  state 
joined  the  cabal.  Senator  Foraker  did  not  come  out  openly 
against  Mr.  Hanna,  but  the  fight  was  being  carried  on  by  his 
political  associates.  In  the  only  interview  with  him  published 
during  the  contest,  he  stated  merely  that  he  was  doing  his  best 
to  keep  out  of  it. 

During  the  first  few  days  the  fight  went  against  Mr.  Hanna. 
Vernon  H.  Burke,  the  Senator  from  Cuyahoga  County,  absented 
himself  on  the  day  the  Senate  assembled  (the  first  Monday  in 
January)  and  that  body  was  consequently  organized  by  the 
Democrats.  The  vote  stood  seventeen  to  eighteen.  When  Mr. 
Burke  finally  appeared  he  voted  with  the  Democrats,  thus  in- 
creasing their  strength  to  nineteen  against  seventeen  for  Mr. 
Hanna.  Senator  Voight  of  Hamilton  voted  with  the  Republi- 
cans, having  reached  an  understanding  with  Mr.  Garfield  and 
the  regular  Republican  Senators  that  the  latter  would  support 
any  antimachine  legislation  for  Hamilton  County,  which 
sought  to  restore  popular  political  control  in  that  district. 

In  the  House,  also,  Mr.  Hanna  fared  ill.  Ten  Assemblymen 
did  not  appear  at  the  preliminary  Republican  caucus.  The 
absentees  included,  besides  Messrs.  Bramley  and  Mason,  J.  C. 
Otis  of  Hamilton,  D.  O.  Rutan  of  Harrison,  William  A.  Scott  of 
Fulton  and  John  P.  Jones  of  Stark.  These  six  men,  together 
with  Burke,  were  the  Republicans  who  voted  against  Mr.  Hanna 
on  the  official  ballot.  All  of  them,  except  Otis  and  Rutan,  had 
been  pledged  to  Mr.  Hanna.  Of  the  other  four  absentees  one 
was  sick.  Assemblyman  Charles  F.  Droste  attended  the  caucus. 
Thus  the  "bipartisan"  combination  succeeded  also  in  organiz- 
ing the  Assembly.  Nine  Republicans  voted  with  the  forty- 
seven  Democrats  and  elected  as  Speaker,  Mason,  the  anti- 
Hanna  convert  from  Cuyahoga  County.  If  a  vote  had  been 
taken  on  that  day,  the  allies  could  apparently  have  mustered  on 


SENATOR   BY   ELECTION  255 

joint  ballot  seventy-five  anti-Hanna  legislators,  two  more  than 
constituted  the  majority  necessary  for  election. 

But  the  allies  were  not  ready  for  a  vote.  On  Wednesday  the 
Legislature  adjourned  until  the  following  Tuesday.  This  ad- 
journment proved  fatal  to  the  success  of  the  conspiracy,  but  the 
allies  were  compelled  to  take  it  because  they  had  not  agreed 
upon  a  candidate.  A  preliminary  understanding  had  been 
reached  with  the  Democratic  leaders  that  in  order  to  beat  Mr. 
Hanna,  the  Democrats  were  to  vote  for  a  Republican;  but 
when  the  time  came  to  select  the  particular  Republican,  it 
proved  hard  to  force  the  Democratic  rank  and  file  into  line. 
There  were  a  few  convinced  Bryanites  among  them  who  would 
vote  for  none  but  a  "Silver  Republican."  Charles  L.  Kurtz 
was  favorably  mentioned  in  the  beginning,  but  his  name  was 
soon  dropped.  There  followed  some  talk  of  electing  Mayor 
McKisson  for  the  short  term  and  Governor  Bushnell  for  the 
long  term.  The  Governor  was  willing,  but  not  to  the  point  of 
becoming  a  silver-lined  Republican.  John  R.  McLean  was  the 
accepted  Democratic  candidate  for  Senator,  and  the  course  of 
giving  him  a  complimentary  vote  before  switching  to  a  Republi- 
can was  considered  for  a  while.  Finally,  however,  even  this 
formal  tribute  to  partisan  consistency  was  abandoned.  At  the 
last  moment  the  coalition  found  Mayor  McKisson  to  be  the 
most  available  candidate  for  both  the  long  and  the  short  term. 
The  Democratic  caucus  was  stormy,  but  its  scruples  were  as- 
suaged by  the  appearance  of  the  statesmanlike  candidate,  who 
explained  that  while  " before  the  people"  he  was  a  Republican, 
he  would  nevertheless  stand  as  Senator  upon  the  Chicago  plat- 
form. That  is,  although  always  a  Republican,  and  although  he 
had  spoken  from  the  same  platform  as  Mr.  Hanna  during  the 
campaign,  he  was  just  as  much  of  a  Democrat  as  was  necessary 
to  get  elected.  To  their  credit,  be  it  said,  there  were  three 
Democratic  legislators  who  later  refused  to  cast  their  ballots  for 
this  convert  to  Democracy. 

It  was  not,  however,  until  Monday,  January  10,  that  Mayor 
McKisson  had  been  selected  as  the  anti-Hanna  candidate. 
During  the  five  intervening  days  Columbus  had  been  the  scene 
of  probably  the  most  embittered  and  desperate  fight  ever  devel- 
oped by  American  party  politics.  The  action  of  the  Republi- 


256      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

can  malcontents  in  combining  with  the  Democrats  to  defeat 
Mr.  Hanna  had  taken  the  state  by  surprise.  His  election  had 
been  considered  secure.  An  extraordinary  outburst  of  popular 
indignation  followed.  The  whole  state  was  in  an  uproar. 
Mass  meetings  were  held  in  the  great  majority  of  towns  and 
cities  all  over  Ohio  to  denounce  the  traitors  and  their  treachery. 
The  meeting  in  Cleveland  was  attended  by  eight  thousand  people. 
Vigorous  measures  were  taken  to  make  these  protests  felt  in 
Columbus.  Delegations  were  sent  to  the  capital  from  many 
parts  of  the  state  and  particularly  from  those  counties  whose 
representatives  were  members  of  the  conspiracy.  The  delega- 
tion from  Cleveland  included  one  hundred  of  the  most  conspicu- 
ous business  men  in  the  city. 

Columbus  came  to  resemble  a  mediaeval  city  given  over  to 
an  angry  feud  between  armed  partisans.  Everybody  was 
worked  up  to  a  high  pitch  of  excitement  and  resentment.  Blows 
were  exchanged  in  the  hotels  and  on  the  streets.  There  were 
threats  of  assassination.  Timid  men  feared  to  go  out  after 
dark.  Certain  members  of  the  Legislature  were  supplied  with 
body-guards.  Many  of  them  never  left  their  rooms.  Detec- 
tives and  spies,  who  were  trying  to  track  down  various  stories 
of  bribery  and  corruption,  were  scattered  everywhere.  Much  of 
the  indignation  was  concentrated  on  the  Governor.  His  in- 
auguration was  the  ghost  of  a  ceremony.  The  reception  was 
over  in  twenty  minutes,  and  out  of  the  two  hundred  and  fifty 
invitations  sent  to  prominent  people  in  Columbus  to  be  present, 
only  twenty-five  were  accepted.  A  delegation  of  the  Govern- 
or's own  fellow-townsmen  and  neighbors  went  to  see  him  in 
a  body  and  asked  him  to  explain  his  behavior.  Finding  that 
he  could  or  would  return  no  satisfactory  answer  to  their  com- 
plaints, they  insulted  him  to  his  face.  They  threw  his  litho- 
graph portrait  on  the  floor  in  front  of  him,  and  spat  and  wiped 
their  feet  upon  it. 

The  excitement  was  caused,  not  merely  by  indignation  and 
resentment,  but  by  the  fact  that  the  decision  one  way  or  the 
other  would  depend  on  the  votes  of  a  very  few  men.  Mr.  Hanna 
required  four  additional  votes,  including  that  of  Mr.  Droste,  who 
had  entered  the  caucus,  in  order  to  be  elected  —  assuming,  of 
course,  that  he  could  keep  all  of  his  existing  supporters.  The 


SENATOR   BY  ELECTION  257 

most  extraordinary  efforts  were  made,  consequently,  to  capture 
these  doubtful  men.  For  instance,  among  the  Assemblymen 
who  had  stayed  away  from  the  Republican  caucus  was  John  E. 
Griffith  of  Union  County.  He  had  announced  definitely  soon 
after  he  reached  Columbus  that  he  would  not  vote  for  Mr. 
Hanna.  Prior  to  the  time  of  this  declaration  he  had  been  living 
at  the  Neil  House,  the  Hanna  headquarters ;  but  on  the  day  of 
the  announcement  he  suddenly  disappeared,  and  Mr.  Raima's 
friends  were  unable  to  locate  him.  If  they  could  get  at  him  they 
thought  they  could  do  something  with  him,  because  his  constitu- 
ents had  been  outraged  at  what  they  regarded  as  his  treachery, 
and  had  been  passing  resolutions  denouncing  him  and  calling 
upon  him  to  redeem  his  pledge.  Finally  it  was  discovered  that 
the  man  had  been  drugged  or  intoxicated,  and  concealed  in  the 
rooms  of  the  McKisson  men  at  the  Southern  Hotel.  At  the 
same  time  they  learned  that  Griffith  was  weakening  and  was 
scared  by  the  denunciations  which  had  been  showered  upon 
him.  So  one  night  a  carriage  was  sent  to  the  rear  of  the  South- 
ern Hotel,  and  both  Mr.  Griffith  and  his  wife  were  brought  back 
rapidly  and  secretly  to  the  Neil  House.  There  they  were  kept 
under  lock  and  key  —  not  only  for  the  remainder  of  the  night, 
but  until  the  day  of  the  first  ballot.  It  was  feared  that  an  at- 
tempt would  be  made  to  abduct  them,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact 
certain  partisans  of  McKisson  did  attempt  to  force  their  way 
to  the  room. 

The  vote  of  Griffith  would  never  have  been  recovered,  had 
not  the  fellow-townsmen  of  the  delinquent  brought  home  to  him 
the  consequences  of  his  behavior.  The  most  powerful  of  all 
forces  was  working  on  Mr.  Hanna's  behalf — that  of  an  outraged 
public  sentiment.  It  strengthened  incalculably  the  hands  of 
Mr.  Hanna's  friends.  The  most  desperate  tactics  were  used  to 
snatch  one  or  two  votes  away  from  Mr.  Hanna ;  but  his  sup- 
porters held  firm  to  the  last  man  because,  if  for  no  other  reason, 
they  knew  that  if  they  deserted,  they  would  be  black-listed  both 
by  public  opinion  and  by  the  Republican  organization.  Not 
only,  however,  were  there  no  more  converts  made  by  the  allies 
between  the  adjournment  of  the  Legislature  and  the  ballot,  but 
the  Hanna  strength  was  constantly  increasing.  Of  the  ten  Repre- 
sentatives who  stayed  out  of  the  caucus  of  the  lower  House,  the 


258      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

one  who  was  sick  recovered  in  time  to  vote  for  Mr.  Hanna. 
Another  was  the  John  C.  Griffith  who  had  been  drugged  and 
almost  kidnapped.  Two  others,  Representatives  Joyce  of  Cam- 
bridge and  Manuel  of  Montgomery,  announced  before  Saturday 
that  they  would  return  to  the  fold.  There  remained  only  the  six 
Representatives  and  the  one  Senator  who  voted  for  McKisson 
on  the  first  ballot  and  Mr.  Charles  F.  Droste. 

In  the  meantime  the  friends  of  Mr.  Hanna  were  busily  circu- 
lating a  paper,  absolutely  pledging  its  signers  to  vote  for  him. 
The  great  majority  of  the  signatures  were  readily  obtained ;  but 
the  pledges  of  the  last  two  or  three  men,  necessary  to  assure  his 
election,  came  hard.  A  negro  Representative  from  Cleveland, 
named  Clifford,  gave  a  great  deal  of  trouble,  and  required  con- 
stant solicitation  and  surveillance,  although  he  finally  signed 
and  voted  true  to  his  signature.  By  one  or  two  o'clock  in  the 
morning  previous  to  the  day  of  the  ballot  the  pledges  of  seventy- 
two  legislators  had  been  secured,  including  that  of  Senator 
Voight  of  Hamilton  County.  Excluding  the  Representatives 
who  had  definitely  announced  that  they  would  not  vote  for  Mr. 
Hanna,  the  only  other  possible  adherent  was  Mr.  Droste.  The 
election  of  Mr.  Hanna  on  the  first  ballot  depended  on  the  ability 
of  his  friends  to  obtain  Mr.  Droste 's  consent  on  Tuesday 
morning. 

Mr.  James  R.  Garfield  had  from  the  start  attended  to  the 
negotiations  with  the  delegation  from  Hamilton  County;  and 
he  it  was  who  finally  induced  Mr.  Droste  to  sign.  The  latter 
is  described  as  a  man  who  was  acting  in  obedience  to  his  per- 
sonal convictions  and  pledges.  He  had  never  promised  to  sup- 
port Mr.  Hanna.  He  had  on  the  contrary  pledged  his  support 
to  Colonel  Jeptha  A.  Gerrard,  a  lawyer  of  Cincinnati  and  a  bi- 
metallist.  It  was  hoped  that  Colonel  Gerrard  might,  with  Mr. 
Droste's  vote,  be  elected,  for  he  was  a  "Silver  Republican"  by 
conviction  and  had  a  title  to  consideration,  in  case  the  allies 
had  been  united  on  any  basis  of  principle.  He  was  offered  the 
short  term  in  return  for  his  support  of  McKisson  for  the  long 
term ;  but  Colonel  Gerrard  refused  to  consent  to  any  such  bargain. 
If  he  had  consented,  the  combination  might  have  gone  through. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  action  of  the  Democratic  caucus  in  select- 
ing McKisson  for  both  the  short  and  long  terms,  and  the  conse- 


SENATOR   BY  ELECTION  259 

quent  hopelessness  of  Colonel  Gerrard's  candidacy,  released  Mr. 
Droste.  He  immediately  promised  to  give  his  vote  to  Mr.  Hanna, 
and  his  vote  was  the  one  which  was  needed  in  order  to  make  up 
the  required  majority  of  seventy-three. 

On  Tuesday,  January  11,  the  two  Houses  balloted  separately ; 
Mr.  Hanna  received  seventeen  votes  in  the  Senate  and  fifty-six 
in  the  Assembly.  On  that  day  the  total  number  of  McKisson 
supporters  was  only  sixty-eight,  —  one  Democrat  being  absent 
and  three  bolting  the  caucus  nominee.  But  the  anxiety  was 
not  over  yet.  It  required  a  joint  ballot  to  assure  the  result,  and 
one  deserter  could  upset  everything.  The  seventy-three  Hanna 
legislators  went  to  the  State  House  under  the  protection  of  Mr. 
Hanna's  friends.  Armed  guards  were  stationed  at  every  impor- 
tant point.  The  State  House  was  full  of  desperate  and  deter- 
mined men.  A  system  of  signals  was  arranged  and  operated  so 
that  Mr.  Hanna  and  his  friends  at  the  Neil  House  could  be 
informed  of  the  progress  of  the  ballot.  The  seventy-three  voted 
as  they  had  voted  the  day  before  against  seventy  for  McKisson. 
A  white  handkerchief  waved  violently  by  a  man  on  the  steps  of 
the  State  House  gave  notice  to  Mr.  Hanna,  who  was  watching 
anxiously  at  a  window,  that  he  was  elected. 

One  aspect  of  this  fierce  contest  remains  to  be  considered. 
During  the  days  of  suspense  charges  of  bribery  were  freely  made 
on  both  sides.  An  election  which  turned  on  only  a  few  doubt- 
ful votes  and  which  aroused  such  violent  passions  was  bound  to 
create  a  cloud  of  mutual  suspicions,  and  no  serious  or  impartial 
attempt  would  be  made  to  verify  the  reports.  Men's  attitude 
towards  them  would  be  determined  by  their  sympathy  with  or 
their  antipathy  against  Mr.  Hanna.  One  of  these  charges, 
however,  became  public.  On  Sunday,  January  9,  the  news- 
papers published  a  specific  accusation  that  an  agent  of  Mr. 
Hanna's  had  attempted  to  bribe  Mr.  J.  C.  Otis,  the  "Silver 
Republican"  Representative  from  Cincinnati,  and  that  an 
attorney  named  Thomas  C.  Campbell  was  a  witness  to  the 
attempt.  The  charge,  coming  as  it  did  at  a  critical  moment  of 
the  struggle,  produced  the  utmost  consternation  among  Mr. 
Hanna's  supporters.  They  feared  for  its  effect  on  public  opinion. 
The  charge,  however,  was  never  taken  very  seriously  by  the 
public.  Popular  opinion  had  decided  for  Mr.  Hanna,  and  the 


260      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS    LIFE    AND   WORK 

accusation  was  discounted  as  merely  a  desperate  attempt  to 
stem  the  tide  of  sentiment  in  the  Senator's  favor.  Mr.  Hanna 
vigorously  denied  that  the  man  accused  of  bribery  was  any 
agent  of  his,  and  stigmatized  the  whole  story  as  a  lie. 

The  accusation  failed  of  the  immediately  beneficial  effect 
which  had  been  hoped  for  it ;  but  even  though  it  did  not  pre- 
vent his  election,  his  enemies  naturally  pushed  it  home  for  his 
subsequent  embarrassment.  They  controlled  the  state  Senate. 
On  the  very  morning  of  the  day  dedicated  to  the  decisive  joint 
ballot  a  resolution  was  passed  constituting  a  Committee  of 
Investigation.  The  membership  of  the  Committee,  however,  was 
such  as  to  make  it  appear  a  prosecuting  rather  than  an  investi- 
gating body.  Its  chairman  was  Vernon  H.  Burke,  the  malcon- 
tent from  Cuyahoga  County  who  was  Mr.  Hanna's  one  per- 
sonal enemy  in  the  Senate.  He  was  assisted  by  three  Democrats 
and  by  Senator  Garfield  —  who  declined  to  serve,  but  was  not 
excused.  An  investigation  conducted  by  such  a  body,  which 
refused  to  permit  the  representation  of  the  accused  by  counsel, 
could  not  be  anything  but  extremely  prejudiced.  Mr.  Hanna 
was  advised  by  his  attorneys  to  ignore  the  Committee,  to  refuse 
to  recognize  its  jurisdiction,  and  neither  to  testify  himself  nor 
allow  any  of  his  friends  and  agents  to  testify.  The  consequence 
was  that  all  the  evidence  unearthed  by  the  Committee  was 
dug  up  among  Mr.  Hanna's  accusers.  These  witnesses  were 
never  sufficiently  cross-examined,  and  their  testimony  was  never 
supplemented  and  corrected  by  that  of  his  agents  said  to  be 
implicated.  The  report  of  the  Committee  claimed  to  prove 
(1)  that  an  attempt  was  made  to  bribe  J.  C.  Otis  to  vote  for 
Mr.  Hanna,  (2)  that  an  agent  of  Mr.  Hanna's  was  the  perpetra- 
tor of  the  attempt,  and  (3)  that  Mayor  E.  G.  Rathbone,  Charles 
F.  Dick  and  H.  H.  Hollenbeck,  Mr.  Hanna's  lieutenants,  were 
implicated  therein. 

This  report  was  sent  to  the  Senate  of  the  United  States  and 
was  referred  to  its  Committee  on  Privileges  and  Elections. 
The  report  of  the  United  States  Senate  Committee  declared 
(1)  that  the  evidence  failed  wholly  to  prove  that  Mr.  Hanna 
was  elected  Senator  through  bribery,  (2)  that  any  agent  was 
authorized  by  him  to  use  corrupt  methods,  (3)  or  that  he  had 
any  personal  knowledge  of  the  facts  of  the  Otis  case.  The 


SENATOR   BY   ELECTION  261 

only  question  upon  which  the  Committee  had  any  doubt  was 
whether  it  should  conduct  an  independent  investigation  of  its 
own ;  and  this  it  decided  not  to  do,  because  Mr.  Hanna's  title 
to  his  seat  was  not  impeached,  and  because  no  demand  for  the 
prosecution  of  any  further  inquiry  had  been  received  from  the 
state  of  Ohio.  The  Democratic  Senators  on  the  Committee 
urged  that  a  further  investigation  ought  to  be  made,  but 
di'd  not  claim  any  proof  of  Mr.  Hanna's  implication  in  the 
affair. 

So  the  matter  has  rested  until  this  day.  Only  on  one  occa- 
sion was  the  incident  used  by  Mr.  Hanna's  political  opponents. 
The  dubious  nature  of  the  testimony  which  was  supposed  to 
prove  Mr.  Hanna's  connection  with  the  alleged  attempt  to  bribe 
Otis  prevented  its  exploitation.  There  is  as  much  doubt  to-day 
as  fourteen  years  ago  concerning  what  actually  occurred.  The 
true  story  can  never  be  ascertained  because  certain  essential 
witnesses,  including  the  alleged  agent,  are  dead.  Our  only 
interest  in  the  matter  relates  to  the  attempt  to  make  Mr.  Hanna 
responsible  for  the  mission  which  took  the  man  to  Cincinnati. 

Mr.  Hanna's  published  repudiation  of  any  connection  with 
the  business  was  contained  in  the  following  words:  "I  deny 
having  authorized  any  agent  or  representative  of  mine  to  make 
any  offer  to  Representative  Otis  or  any  other  member  of  the 
Assembly.  I  never  sent  any  man  to  Cincinnati  to  see  Mr.  Otis. 
I  have  never  known  or  seen  this  particular  man  in  my  life,  and 
have  had  no  transactions  with  him."  Alongside  of  this  com- 
prehensive repudiation  may  be  placed  the  concluding  para- 
graphs of  an  affivadit  of  the  supposed  agent  signed  by  him  in 
Boston  on  March  12,  1898,  and  attested  by  Justin  Whitney, 
Notary  Public.  "I  did  not  go  to  Ohio  by  request  of  Senator 
Hanna  directly  or  indirectly.  I  did  not  represent  him,  and  never 
for  a  moment  assumed  to  do  so,  but  on  the  contrary  I  repeatedly 
stated  that  I  did  not  act  for  either  him  or  his  Committee.  What- 
ever I  did  there  was  upon  my  own  judgment,  based  upon  good 
legal  advice,  and  for  the  good  of  the  cause  as  I  saw  it.  I  am  not 
now,  and  never  have  been,  the  agent  of  the  agent  or  representa- 
tive of  Senator  Hanna,  and  as  I  have  never  been  introduced  to 
him  he  would  have  no  means  of  recognizing  me  if  I  should 
meet  him  on  the  street."  These  statements  are  confirmed  by 


262      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

the  testimony  before  the  Senate  Committee  both  of  J.  C.  Otis 
and  the  lawyer,  Thomas  C.  Campbell.  They  both  state  ex- 
plicitly that  the  man  denied  that  he  knew  or  represented  Mr. 
Hanna. 

The  Committee  of  the  Ohio  Senate  attempted  to  prove  Mr. 
Hanna's  connection  with  the  alleged  attempt  at  bribery  by  the 
testimony  of  various  detectives,  amateur  and  professional,  who 
shadowed  the  supposed  agent  and  others  and  overheard  tele- 
phone conversations  between  the  man  in  Cincinnati  and  the 
Hanna  headquarters  in  Columbus.  The  United  States  Senate 
Committee  on  Privileges  and  Elections  did  not  dismiss  this  testi- 
mony as  entirely  unworthy  of  belief.  "It  raises  suspicions,"  so 
they  say,  "that  Mr.  Hanna's  representatives  in  Columbus  knew 
what  the  alleged  agent  was  doing."  Those  suspicions  were  justi- 
fied. Major  Rathbone  did  know  of  the  mission  to  Cincinnati. 
The  precise  nature  of  the  connection  between  the  Hanna  head- 
quarters and  the  emissary  remains  dubious;  but  the  following 
statements  are  corroborated  by  a  sufficient  number  of  witnesses 
to  be  considered  as  facts.  The  man  went  to  Columbus  at  the 
request  of  Mr.  C.  C.  Shayne,  a  furrier  in  New  York,  an  ardent 
protectionist  and  a  notorious  busybody.  Mr.  Shayne  called 
up  the  Hanna  headquarters  from  New  York  and  recommended 
him  as  an  able  talker  and  negotiator.  Mr.  Hanna  probably 
heard  about  the  matter,  but  had  nothing  to  do  with  it  person- 
ally. The  man  was  turned  over  to  Major  Rathbone,  and  after 
an  interview  with  Rathbone  in  Columbus  he  went  to  Cincinnati. 
From  there  he  did  have  conversations  over  the  telephone  with 
Rathbone  in  Columbus.  The  testimony  as  to  what  occurred  in 
Cincinnati  is  hopelessly  conflicting.  If  there  is  any  truth  in  the 
affidavit,  the  only  inducements  offered  by  him  to  Otis  to  vote 
for  Mr.  Hanna  were  the  "cordial  approval  of  his  party  and  the 
rewards  which  that  would  naturally  bring  to  him."  He  admits 
having  offered  Thomas  C.  Campbell,  during  a  later  interview,  a 
"retainer,"  which  he  says  Mr.  Campbell  demanded  in  return 
for  advising  Otis  to  vote  for  Mr.  Hanna.  After  the  exposure 
he  promptly  quitted  the  state. 

It  would  be  futile  to  indulge  in  any  theories  as  to  what  actu- 
ally occurred.  The  probability  is  that  the  emissary  was  the 
victim  of  the  men  with  whom  he  was  negotiating  rather  than 


SENATOR   BY   ELECTION  263 

their  intentional  corruptor.  His  connection  with  the  Hanna 
headquarters  is  admitted  both  by  ex-Senator  Charles  Dick  and 
Major  Rathbone,  but  both  of  them  exonerate  Mr.  Hanna  from 
any  but  the  most  superficial  acquaintance  with  the  business. 
Mr.  Hanna's  public  statement  does  not  assert  that  he  never 
heard  of  the  man,  but  only  that  he  never  saw  him  and  did  not 
authorize  him  directly  or  indirectly  to  make  any  offer  to  Otis. 
This  statement  is  confirmed  by  the  assertions  of  his  own  agents, 
by  the  affidavit  of  the  emissary  and  by  the  testimony  both  of 
Otis  and  Campbell.  Mr.  Hanna's  friends  may  very  well  be 
content  to  let  it  go  at  that,  and  his  enemies  should  certainly  give 
him  the  credit  of  one  beneficial  consideration.  If  Mr.  Hanna 
had  himself  planned  to  purchase  the  vote  of  John  C.  Otis,  it  is 
reasonable  to  believe  that  the  business  would  have  been  better 
managed. 

Everybody  most  closely  associated  with  Mr.  Hanna  in  this 
fight  state  unequivocally  that  the  Senator  always  refused  even 
to  consider  the  corrupt  use  of  money.  He  paid  the  expenses  of 
the  men  who  were  working  for  him.  Many  of  his  assistants  and 
supporters  were  subsequently  rewarded  by  appointment  to 
Federal  or  state  offices.  All  of  the  Republican  malcontents 
were  black-listed  and  have  never  since  recovered  any  influence 
in  Ohio  politics.  But  he  never  authorized  any  but  these  usual 
means  of  rewarding  his  friends  and  punishing  his  enemies. 
Moreover,  his  rejection  of  corrupt  methods  was  not  encouraged 
by  any  lack  of  easy  and  favorable  opportunities.  An  obvious 
method  of  preventing  the  election  of  any  other  candidate  would 
have  been  to  send  a  couple  of  Democratic  representatives  out 
of  the  state.  Certain  of  them  were  known,  not  merely  to  be 
open  to  persuasion,  but  eager  to  be  persuaded.  Several  con- 
spicuous Republicans  asked  James  B.  Morrow  to  call  Mr. 
Hanna's  attention  to  one  particular  case.  He  listened  good- 
naturedly,  but  answered :  "I  will  not  give  a  cent  for  any  man's 
vote.  I  am  not  engaged  in  that  kind  of  business.  If  I  am  to  be 
defeated  by  the  use  of  money,  well  and  good ;  but  I  shall  not 
spend  a  dollar  illegitimately  to  prevent  that  defeat.  I  would  not 
purchase  a  single  vote  —  even  if  that  were  the  only  way  to  save 
me  from  being  beaten."  Mr.  Morrow  adds  that  during  the 
fight  he  was  in  and  out  of  Mr.  Hanna's  private  room  at  all  hours 


264      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS    LIFE    AND   WORK 

of  the  day  and  night  and  at  the  most  unexpected  moments,  and 
that  he  never  heard  a  suspicious  word. 

Mr.  James  R.  Garfield's  testimony  is  equally  definite.  He 
heard  of  two  specific  instances  in  which  representations  were 
made  to  Mr.  Hanna  that  a  certain  vote  could  be  purchased,  but 
without  the  slightest  effect.  During  some  talk  about  the  oppor- 
tunities of  aiding  Democratic  representatives  to  leave  the  state, 
Mr.  Garfield  said  to  him:  "You  know,  of  course,  how  I  feel. 
If  money  is  used  I  shall  vote  against  you."  The  Senator  re- 
plied, "Jim,  I  know  just  how  you  feel,  and  I  should  expect  you 
to  vote  against  me."  No  one  who  knows  the  kind  of  man  Mr. 
Hanna  was  can  doubt  the  sincerity  of  such  assertions.  If  he 
had  intended  to  purchase  votes,  he  doubtless  would  not  have 
talked  about  it  in  public,  but  neither  would  he  have  paraded  any 
conscientious  scruples  against  it.  He  was  not  a  hypocrite,  and 
he  never  pretended  to  be  any  better  than  he  really  was.  His 
ambition  to  be  elected  Senator  was  indissolubly  connected  with 
his  most  vital  aspirations.  His  own  career,  no  less  than  that  of 
McKinley's,  demanded  an  honorable  victory.  Like  every  hon- 
est man  he  had  conscientious  scruples  about  buying  votes  for  his 
own  political  benefit ;  and  his  conscience,  when  aroused,  was 
dictatorial.  He  believed  certain  practices  were  right  which 
may  have  been  wrong,  but  if  he  believed  a  practice  to  be  wrong, 
he  would  have  none  of  it. 

It  does  not  follow  that  no  money  was  corruptly  used  for  Mr. 
Hanna's  benefit.  Columbus  was  full  of  rich  friends  less  scrupu- 
lous than  he.  Many  of  these  friends  were  Cleveland  business 
men,  who  hated  the  idea  of  a  possible  McKisson  election  about 
as  much  as  they  did  that  of  Mr.  Hanna's  defeat.  They  may 
have  been  willing  to  spend  money  in  Mr.  Hanna's  interest  and 
without  his  knowledge.  Whether  as  a  matter  of  fact  any  such 
money  was  spent  I  do  not  know,  but  under  the  circumstances 
the  possibility  thereof  should  be  frankly  admitted. 

Some  of  my  readers  may  object  that  in  describing  the  opposi- 
tion to  Mr.  Hanna's  election  as  a  conspiracy,  and  his  Republican 
opponents  as  traitors,  reprehensible  methods  and  motives  have 
been  imputed  to  men  who  may  have  had  conscientious  reasons 
for  their  behavior.  The  epithets  which  have  been  used  are 
literally  correct.  No  blame  could  be  attached  to  any  Republi- 


SENATOR   BY   ELECTION  265 

can  who,  during  the  campaign,  had  either  opposed  Mr.  Hanna 
or  had  refused  to  support  him.  But  his  opponents  adopted 
other  methods.  During  the  campaign  they  either  explicitly 
pledged  their  votes  to  him,  or  they  did  so  indirectly  by  speaking 
from  the  same  platform  with  him.  If  any  sanctity  attaches  to 
public  partisan  and  personal  obligations,  all  but  two  or  three  of 
Mr.  Hanna's  Republican  opponents  were  guilty  of  treachery; 
and  they  were  traitors  not  only  to  their  pledges  and  their  party, 
but  to  the  clearly  expressed  popular  will.  On  the  other  hand  the 
Democrats,  in  order  to  beat  Mr.  Hanna,  cast  their  votes  for  a 
man  who  was  a  Republican  " before  the  people"  and  who  had 
not  any  real  claim  to  their  allegiance.  The  opposition  was  wholly 
without  principle  either  in  its  purposes  or  methods.  The  Re- 
publicans were  satisfying  a  personal  grudge  by  means  of  a 
betrayal  of  their  individual  and  partisan  obligations.  The 
Democrats  joined  them,  so  as  to  cut  short  then  and  there  the 
political  career  of  their  most  redoubtable  opponent.  The  stock 
shibboleth  of  the  conspirators  was  opposition  to  "Boss"  rule; 
but  this  slogan,  whatever  its  pertinence  and  weight,  was  sheer 
hypocrisy  in  the  mouths  of  its  authors. 

If  Mark  Hanna  had  been  a  "Boss"  in  the  sense  that  Matthew 
Quay  or  Thomas  C.  Platt  were  "Bosses,"  the  conspiracy  would 
have  succeeded.  He  triumphed  only  because  he  represented 
the  will  of  his  party,  and  enjoyed  the  confidence  of  the  Republi- 
can rank  and  file  in  his  leadership.  If  he  had  not  gone  upon  the 
stump,  if  he  had  not  made  a  favorable  impression  upon  his 
hearers,  and  if  he  had  not  created  a  genuine  public  opinion  in 
his  favor,  his  political  career  might  well  have  ended  in  January, 
1898.  At  this  critical  moment  in  his  public  life  he  was  saved, 
because  he  had  the  courage  and  the  flexibility  to  break  away 
from  the  limitations  of  a  political  manager  and  to  try  and  create 
a  genuine  popular  following.  Thus  his  political  personality 
emerged  beyond  the  screen  which  always  hides  the  real  "Boss" 
from  public  inspection.  In  the  nice  balance  of  political  forces 
upon  which  his  election  depended,  the  scale  was  tipped  by  his 
ability  to  create  among  enough  of  the  people  of  Ohio  the  same 
kind  of  confidence  in  himself  which  until  then  had  been  con- 
fined to  his  business  and  political  associates. 

On  the  day  of  election  he  made  the  following  speech  to  his 
supporters  in  the  Legislature  :  — 


266      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

"Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  of  the  Ohio  Legislature: 
I  thank  you  with  a  grateful  heart  for  the  distinguished  honor 
which  you  have  just  conferred  upon  me.  I  doubly  thank  you, 
because  under  the  circumstances  it  comes  to  me  as  an  assurance 
of  your  confidence  —  the  assurance,  which  given  to  me  in  the 
beginning  of  this  term  of  service  to  you  and  to  my  state,  graces 
me  with  the  strongest  hope  that  I  shall  be  able  to  fulfil  your 
expectation  and  do  my  whole  part  by  the  whole  people  of  Ohio. 
Standing  outside  of  the  line  of  the  smoke  of  battle,  which  your 
President  has  just  spoken  of,  and  viewing  this  situation  from 
the  standpoint  of  a  citizen  of  Ohio,  I  come  to  accept  this  high 
honor,  recognizing  that  when  I  assume  my  duties  in  the  United 
States  Senate  that  I  am  the  Senator  for  the  whole  people  of  Ohio. 
This  is  my  native  state.  I  was  born  in  Ohio.  I  have  always 
loved  this  commonwealth,  have  always  striven  to  do  what  might 
be  in  my  power  to  accomplish  the  advancement  of  her  develop- 
ment and  prosperity.  If  my  endeavor  is  now  transplanted  to  a 
different  field  of  duty,  that  duty  will  be  none  the  less  incumbent 
upon  me.  In  accepting  this  honor  I  accept  in  an  appreciative 
sense  the  fulness  of  the  responsibilities  which  go  with  it,  and, 
under  God,  I  promise  my  people  to  be  a  faithful  servant  to  their 
interests  during  the  entire  time  of  my  service.  I  thank  you." 

These  words  are  not  really  addressed  to  the  Legislature.  They 
are  addressed  to  the  people  of  his  native  state  by  a  man  who 
really  wanted  to  represent  his  own  people  as  a  whole.  He  knew 
that  he  had  really  been  elected  by  them ;  and  in  the  moment  of 
his  triumph  he  recognized  fully  both  the  source  of  the  victory 
and  its  responsibilities. 

APPENDIX   TO   CHAPTER  XVIII 

During  the  campaign  in  the  fall  of  1897  the  Democratic  newspapers 
kept  standing  for  days  in  black-faced  capitals  the  following  sentence, 
which  was  attributed  to  Mr.  Hanna:  "No  man  in  public  office  owes 
the  public  anything."  They  obtained  this  little  rule  of  official  action 
from  a  letter  which  Mr.  Hanna  was  supposed  to  have  written  to  Mr. 
David  K.  Watson,  at  one  time  Attorney-General  of  Ohio,  and  which 
reproached  him  for  having  interfered  with  the  business  of  the  Standard 
Oil  Company.  Mr.  Watson  had  brought  suit  against  the  Company 
because  of  the  trust  agreement  under  which  its  business  was  then 


SENATOR   BY   ELECTION  267 

conducted.  Pressure  of  all  kinds  was  immediately  brought  to  bear 
upon  him  to  drop  it.  Mr.  Hanna's  letter  was  part  of  this  pressure. 
No  authentic  copy  of  the  letter  was  published,  but  the  New  York 
World,  on  August  11,  1897,  had  printed  certain  alleged  extracts  from 
it,  including  the  phrase  which  the  Democratic  papers  flourished  in  the 
face  of  their  readers. 

The  way  in  which  these  extracts  came  to  be  published  is  peculiar. 
When  Mr.  Hanna  offered  himself  as  a  candidate  for  the  Senate,  a  news- 
paper correspondent  named  Francis  B.  Gessner  recollected  that  seven 
years  before  he  had  been  allowed  to  read  in  Mr.  Watson's  office  a  letter 
from  Mark  Hanna  about  the  Standard  Oil  suit.  He  went  to  Mr. 
Watson,who  allowed  him  to  read  the  letter,  but  not  to  copy  it.  On  the 
basis  of  what  he  remembered  of  its  text,  reenforced  by  what  other 
people  to  whom  it  had  been  shown  remembered  of  it,  he  published  in  the 
World  the  extracts  which  contained  the  sentence  quoted  above.  These 
extracts  have  been  reprinted  in  Miss  Ida  TarbelPs  "History  of  the 
Standard  Oil  Company,"  and  do  not  concern  us  here.  Mr.  Watson 
declares  that  after  the  publication  of  Mr.  Gessner's  article  he  answered 
all  inquiries  by  admitting  the  receipt  of  some  such  letter,  but  denying 
the  accuracy  of  the  alleged  extracts. 

Mr.  Watson  further  declares  that  Mr.  Hanna  at  their  next  meeting 
after  the  publication  of  these  supposed  extracts  asked  for  the  original 
of  the  letter  and  obtained  from  him  a  promise  to  surrender  it.  Several 
weeks  later,  when  Mr.  Hanna  was  in  Columbus,  Mr.  Watson  went  to  the 
Neil  House  with  the  letter  in  his  pocket.  He  claims  to  have  received 
an  offer  of  $50,000  for  the  original  of  this  document  from  a  prominent 
Democratic  newspaper  in  the  state.  Nevertheless  he  gave  it  to  Mr. 
Hanna  at  a  private  interview  in  Mr.  Hanna's  room  at  the  Neil  House. 
After  reading  it,  Mr.  Hanna  turned  to  Mr.  Watson  (according  to  the 
latter's  account)  and  said :  "  Dave  !  you  once  told  me  that  a  man  who 
would  write  such  a  letter  ought  not  to  be  a  United  States  Senator. 
You  were  right."  After  some  further  conversation  the  letter  was 
torn  into  small  pieces  and  destroyed.  But  Mr.  Watson  claims  that 
as  a  precaution  against  subsequent  misrepresentation  he  kept  a  copy 
of  it.  The  following  is  asserted  to  be  a  transcript  of  the  original 
document. 

"  CLEVELAND,  OHIO,  Nov.  21, 1890. 
"  HON.  DAVID  K.  WATSON,  Columbus,  Ohio. 
"  DEAR  SIR  :  — 

"  Some  months  ago,  when  I  saw  the  announcement  through  the  papers 
that  you  had  begun  a  suit  against  the  Standard  Oil  Co.  in  the  Supreme 
Court,  I  intended,  if  opportunity  presented,  to  talk  with  you,  and 


268      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

failing  in  the  personal  interview,  to  write  you  a  letter,  but  the  subject 
passed  out  of  my  mind.  Recently  while  in  New  York  I  learned  from 
my  friend,  Mr.  John  D.  Rockefeller,  that  such  suit  was  still  pending, 
and  without  any  solicitation  on  his  part  or  suggestion  from  him,  I  de- 
termined to  write  you,  believing  that  both  political  and  business 
interests  justified  me  in  doing  so.  While  I  am  not  personally  inter- 
ested in  the  Standard  Oil  Co.,  many  of  my  closest  friends  are,  and  I 
have  no  doubt  that  many  of  the  business  associations  with  which  I  am 
connected  are  equally  open  to  attack.  The  simple  fact  is,  as  you  will 
discover,  if  you  have  not  already  done  so,  that  in  these  modern  days 
most  commercial  interests  are  properly  and  necessarily  taking  on  the 
form  of  organization  for  the  safety  of  investors,  and  the  improvement 
of  all  conditions  upon  which  business  is  done.  There  is  no  greater 
mistake  for  a  man  in  or  out  of  public  place  to  make  than  to  assume  that 
he  owes  any  duty  to  the  public  or  can  in  any  manner  advance  his  own 
position  or  interests  by  attacking  the  organizations  under  which  ex- 
perience has  taught  business  can  best  be  done.  From  a  party  stand- 
point, interested  in  the  success  of  the  Republican  party,  and  regarding 
you  as  in  the  line  of  political  promotion,  I  must  say  that  the  identification 
of  your  office  with  litigation  of  this  character  is  a  great  mistake.  There 
is  no  public  demand  for  a  raid  upon  organized  capital.  For  years  the 
business  of  manufacturing  oil  has  been  done  with  great  success  at 
Cleveland,  competition  has  been  open  and  free,  and  the  public  has 
been  greatly  benefited  by  the  manner  in  which  the  oil  business  has  been 
carried  on.  The  Standard  Oil  Co.  is  officered  and  managed  by  some 
of  the  best  and  strongest  men  in  the  country.  They  are  pretty  much  all 
Republicans  and  have  been  most  liberal  in  their  contributions  to  the 
party,  as  I  personally  know,  Mr.  Rockefeller  always  quietly  doing  his 
share.  I  think  I  am  in  a  position  to  know  that  the  party  in  this  state 
has  been  at  times  badly  advised.  We  need  for  the  struggles  of  the 
future  the  cooperation  of  our  strongest  business  interests  and  not  their 
indifference  or  hostility.  You  will  probably  not  argue  with  me  in  this. 
I  have  been  informed,  though  I  can  hardly  credit  the  information,  that 
Senator  Sherman  has  encouraged  or  suggested  this  litigation.  If 
that  be  correct,  I  would  like  to  know  it,  because  I  shall  certainly  have 
something  to  say  to  the  Senator  myself.  I  simply  say  with  respect  to 
this  matter,  that  prudence  and  caution  require  you  to  go  very  slow  in 
this  business. 

"  Very  truly  yours, 

(Signed)  "  M.  A.  HANNA." 

On  December  13,  Mr.  Watson  answered  with  the  letter  published 
by  Miss  Tarbell  in  which  he  disclaimed  any  attack  on  organized  capital 


SENATOR  BY  ELECTION  269 

and  asserted  that  Senator  Sherman  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with 
the  suit.  Two  weeks  later  he  received  from  Mr.  Hanna  an  answer 
is  reproduced  below  :  — 


"  CLEVELAND,  OHIO,  Dec.  27,  1890. 
"HON.  D.  K.  WATSON, 
"  DEAR  SIR:  — 

"On  my  return  from  the  East  I  find  your  favor  of  the  13th  inst. 
and  I  am  much  obliged  for  your  attention.  I  think  I  know  a  good 
deal  about  the  Standard  Oil  and  have  from  its  beginning,  as  I 
have  known  the  men  who  organized  it  for  thirty  years,  and  most  of 
them  are  intimate  friends.  There  has  been  no  industry  of  greater 
.benefit  to  our  city,  and  there  are  large  holdings  among  our  enter- 
prising business  men.  They  are  indignant  at  this  attack,  and  when  the 
time  comes  will  make  their  influence  felt.  Therefore  I  have  said  to 
you  in  all  frankness  that  politically  it  is  a  very  sad  mistake,  and  I  am 
.sure  will  not  result  in  much  personal  glory  for  you.  I  am  glad  to 
know  that  Senator  Sherman  has  nothing  to  do  with  it,  and  for  the 
same  reason  I  wish  you  might  have  as  little  to  do  with  it  as  possible 
from  this  tune. 

"  Truly  yours, 

(Signed)  "  M.  A.  HANNA." 

The  second  of  these  letters  is  unquestionably  genuine.  Mr.  James  B. 
Morrow  saw  the  original  with  Mr.  Hanna's  signature  attached.  The 
first  of  them  is  admittedly  only  a  copy  and  obviously  has  no  authenticity 
as  a  document.  A  man  possessing  a  copy  can  make  as  many  additional 
copies  as  he  likes  and  add  or  suppress  as  much  as  suits  his  purpose.  An 
.alleged  copy  must  consequently  be  scrutinized  with  care,  and  the  copyist 
cannot  complain,  in  case  any  part  of  the  text  is  rejected  which  does  not 
square  with  what  we  know  about  its  supposed  author. 

There  is  nothing  in  the  letter  of  November  21  which  in  my  opinion 
Mr.  Hanna  might  not  have  written  in  November,  1890,  except  two 
sentences.  The  text  reads:  "While  I  am  not  personally  interested 
.in  the  Standard  Oil  Co.  many  of  my  closest  friends  are,  and*I  have  no 
doubt  that  many  of  the  business  associations  with  which  I  am  connected 
are  equally  open  to  attack."  It  is  true,  of  course,  that  certain  of  Mr. 
Hanna's  friends  and  relatives  were  interested  in  the  Standard  Oil 
Company,  but,  so  far  as  I  know,  none  of  the  "business  associations  "  with 
which  he  was  connected  was  under  any  suspicion  of  being  illegal.  They 
certainly  were  not  organized  and  operated  under  a  trust  agreement,  as 
was  the  Standard  Oil  Company,  and  they  certainly  could  not  have  been 
.attacked  as  monopolies  or  as  combinations  in  restraint  of  trade.  Of 


270      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

course  Mr.  Hanna  may  have  written  the  sentence  loosely  and  vaguely, 
in  order  to  emphasize  his  general  idea  that  the  Standard  Oil  Company 
was  merely  one  example  of  desirable  organization  in  business,  but  why 
should  he  suggest  to  the  Attorney-General  of  the  state  that  part  of  his 
own  business  was  being  conducted  in  defiance  of  state  laws,  particularly 
in  view  of  the  fact  that  the  assertion  would  have  been  untrue  ? 

Much  more  serious,  however,  is  the  suspicion  which  must  attach 
to  the  sentence :  "There  is  no  greater  mistake  for  a  man  in  or  out  of 
public  place  to  make  than  to  assume  that  he  owes  any  duty  to  the  public 
or  can  in  any  manner  advance  his  own  position  or  interests  by  attacking 
the  organizations  under  which  experience  has  taught  business  can  best 
be  done."  A  fair-minded  man  cannot  read  the  foregoing  sentences 
carefully  without  suspecting  that  the  words  "he  owes  any  duty  to  the 
public  or"  have  been  interpolated.  With  those  words  omitted  the 
meaning  of  the  whole  passage  is  consistent,  whereas  the  phrase  under 
suspicion  adds  an  irrelevant  idea  which  breaks  the  force  of  the  rest 
of  the  sentence.  Mr.  Hanna  might  well  have  written,  "There  is  no 
greater  mistake  for  a  man  in  or  out  of  public  place  to  make  than  to 
assume  that  he  can  in  any  manner  advance  his  own  interests  by  attack- 
ing the  organizations,"  etc.,  but  why,  even  had  he  believed  it,  should  he 
be  cynical  and  incoherent  enough  to  throw  in  a  remark  that  a  public 
official  owes  no  duty  to  the  public  ?  The  supposition  is  incredible.  One 
can  conceive  that  some  such  remark  could  be  passed  in  private  among 
a  group  of  the  lowest  professional  politicians  or  entirely  unscrupulous 
business  men,  but  for  a  man  in  semi-public  life,  no  matter  how  corrupt 
personally,  to  commit  such  an  idea  to  paper  would  be  to  convict  him  of 
childish  folly.  The  folly  becomes  more  than  inexplicable  when  it  is 
remembered  that  the  recommendation  was  addressed  to  a  man  with 
whom  Mr.  Hanna  was  slightly  acquainted,  and  who  would  have  good 
ground  to  be  aggrieved  by  the  letter.  A  perversion  so  gross,  so  pal- 
pable and  so  stupid  exposes  itself. 

Whether  or  not  any  other  passage  in  the  letter  is  or  is  not  genuine 
one  does  not  like  to  assert  with  confidence.  No  doubt  the  greater 
part  of  it  is  authentic,  but  the  suspicion  which  attaches  to  the  whole 
document  makes  it  impossible  to  accept  absolutely  any  part  of  it  and 
base  a  criticism  of  Mr.  Hanna  upon  it.  In  general,  however,  there  is 
this  to  be  said.  Much  of  the  letter  might  have  been  written  by  Mr. 
Hanna  in  1890,  and,  having  done  so,  he  might  have  wanted  it  destroyed 
in  1897.  Moreover,  he  might  have  wanted  to  destroy  it,  not  merely 
because  it  was  troublesome,  but  because  he  was  ashamed  of  it.  A 
man  who  was  to  become  United  States  Senator  should  not  have 
reproached  a  state  prosecuting  attorney  for  bringing  a  plausible  suit 
against  a  possibly  illegal  corporation,  and  he  should  not  have  intimated 


SENATOR   BY   ELECTION  271 

that  for  the  attorney's  own  political  welfare  he  should  thereafter  have 
as  little  as  possible  to  do  with  such  business.  But  Mr.  Hanna  had 
changed  a  good  deal  since  the  fall  of  1890.  He  still  believed  that  the 
organization  of  capital  was  a  good  thing  and  should  not  be  discouraged 
by  law.  He  still  had  very  little  curiosity  whether  as  a  matter  of  fact 
corporations  like  the  Standard  Oil  Company  were  conducting  their 
business  illegally.  He  was  still  too  complaisant  about  accepting 
money  for  political  purposes  from  corporations  whose  legal  standing  was 
at  best  dubious.  But  he  would  not  have  reproached  a  state  prosecuting 
attorney  for  attempting  to  enforce  the  law,  nor  would  he  have  intimated 
that  by  so  doing  the  man's  political  future  would  have  been  com- 
promised. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

THREE   YEARS   OF   TRANSITION 

AN  account  of  Mark  Raima's  career  in  the  Senate  of  the 
United  States  need  touch  only  incidently  upon  many  essential 
phases  of  the  legislative  and  political  history  of  his  seven  years 
of  service.  To  associate  the  history  of  these  years  too  inti- 
mately with  Mr.  Hanna's  biography  would  be  to  convey  a  false 
impression  of  the  scope  of  his  political  influence.  In  respect  to 
certain  problems  confronting  Mr.  McKinley's  administration, 
his  preferences  and  opinions  were  extremely  powerful.  In  re- 
spect to  other  questions,  equally  if  not  more  important,  his  in- 
fluence was  negligible.  He  was  not  the  man  to  interfere  in  any 
business  with  which  his  past  training  and  his  present  position 
did  not  make  him  very  competent  to  deal ;  and  in  relation  to 
many  of  the  most  pressing  questions  of  public  policy,  his  opin- 
ions were  no  more  powerful  and  his  advice  no  more  useful  than 
that  of  a  dozen  other  Republican  Senators. 

The  first  three  years  of  Mr.  Hanna's  service  in  the  Senate 
constituted  a  period  of  transition  in  his  career.  Never  before 
had  he  occupied  an  important  official  position.  Never  before 
had  he  shouldered  any  personal  responsibility  for  questions  of 
public  administration  and  policy.  Hitherto  his  dominant  politi- 
cal interest  had  been  that  of  contriving  the  election  of  his  friends 
and  associates  to  more  or  less  important  offices.  But  suddenly 
he  had  become  a  part  of  the  government — and  an  important 
part,  by  virtue  both  of  his  constitutional  and  his  extra-constitu- 
tional powers.  His  extra-constitutional  power  as  the  confidential 
friend  and  adviser  of  the  President  and  the  chairman  gf  the 
Republican  National  Committee  was  the  natural  product  of  his 
past  achievements ;  and  these  powers  were  exercised  with  vigor 
and  with  good  judgment.  But  his  official  power  as  Senator 
did  not  immediately  attain  any  considerable  momentum.  It 
was  allowed  to  grow  naturally  and  from  relatively  obscure  and 
small  beginnings. 

272 


THREE  YEARS  OF  TRANSITION          273 

' 

There  is  a  certain  class  of  Senators,  usually  lawyers,  who  im- 
mediately become  conspicuous,  if  not  powerful,  in  the  Senate 
chamber  by  virtue  of  a  good  voice,  a  habit  of  fluent  public  speak- 
ing and  a  large  amount  of  public  self-assurance.  But  Mr. 
Hanna  was  still  an  inexperienced  speaker ;  and  he  never  cared 
to  talk  in  public,  except  when  he  could  do  so  with  some  authority. 
Before  becoming  prominent  in  the  official  proceedings  of  the 
Senate,  he  was  bound,  in  obedience  to  his  usual  practice,  to  begin 
by  securing  the  personal  confidence  of  his  colleagues.  He  must 
first  establish  in  his  new  surroundings  that  group  of  personal 
friendships  and  alliances  which  always  constituted  the  founda- 
tion of  his  leadership. 

Neither  could  his  success  in  becoming  a  Senate  leader  be  taken 
for  granted.  That  body  is  something  of  a  club  with  strong 
domestic  prejudices  and  traditions.  Success,  no  matter  how 
brilliant,  obtained  outside  that  body  does  not  guarantee  to  a 
newcomer  any  corresponding  consideration  from  his  colleagues. 
He  has  to  earn  their  consideration  by  acceptable  behavior  on  the 
spot.  Mr.  Hanna's  prominence  as  the  friend  of  McKinley  and 
as  the  chairman  of  the  National  Committee  rather  tended  to 
make  many  of  the  older  Senators  suspicious.  They  would  have 
been  quick  to  resent  any  assumption  of  power  or  any  interfer- 
ence with  the  course  of  legislation  by  virtue  of  Mr.  Hanna 's  rela- 
tions with  the  President.  Moreover,  Mr.  Hanna  was  only  a 
business  man;  and  while  many  business  men  had  managed  to 
secure  seats  in  the  Senate,  they  had  rarely  exercised  much  influ- 
ence therein.  The  typical  Senator  is  a  lawyer.  The  debates 
in  that  body  which  arouse  the  keenest  local  interest  usually 
involve  constitutional  questions  on  which  none  but  a  lawyer  can 
speak  with  authority.  Thus  Mr.  Hanna  had  many  barriers  to 
break  down  before  his  leadership  outside  the  Senate  could  be 
paralleled  by  any  corresponding  influence  within  that  body. 

By  a  curious  fatality,  moreover,  the  most  pressing  problems 
of  the  first  three  years  of  Mr.  McKinley's  administration  were 
remote  from  those  questions  of  domestic  politics,  with  which  Mr. 
Raima's  position,  training  and  experience  had  made  him  com- 
petent to  deal.  As  we  have  seen,  President  McKinley  assumed 
office  pledged  above  all  to  put  an  end  to  a  period  of  economic 
depression  and  to  restore  prosperity.  The  administration  was 


274      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS    LIFE   AND    WORK 

constituted  with  the  domestic  situation  chiefly  in  mind,  and  a 
large  amount  of  legislation  was  planned  for  the  purpose  of  stimu- 
lating industrial  activity.  But  all  these  plans  were  embarrassed, 
if  not  entirely  frustrated,  by  the  insurrection  in  Cuba.  The 
inability  of  the  Spanish  government  to  suppress  the  rebellion, 
the  ruthless  means  adopted  to  that  end  and  the  growing  sym- 
pathy of  a  large  part  of  the  American  people  with  the  insurgents 
was  gradually  creating  an  extremely  critical  situation.  The 
President  and  his  Cabinet  desired  and  intended  to  avoid  war 
with  Cuba,  both  because  they  thought  it  unnecessary  and  be- 
cause they  feared  that  war  would  prevent  them  from  redeeming 
the  pledge  to  restore  prosperity.  Yet  by  its  attitude  towards 
the  Spanish  policy  in  Cuba,  the  administration  at  the  very  out- 
set of  its  career  was  in  danger  of  being  pushed  into  an  unpopular 
position  and  of  losing  the  confidence  of  the  country. 

The  President  had  called  an  extra  session  of  Congress  for  the 
purpose  of  restoring  prosperity  by  means  of  tariff  revision,  and 
the  war  party  in  Congress  used  this  opportunity  to  agitate  for 
intervention  in  Cuba.  A  few  days  after  the  inauguration  a 
joint  resolution  recognizing  the  belligerency  of  the  Cuban  in- 
surgents was  pressed  for  consideration  in  the  Senate.  The 
debate  thereon  ran  along  for  a  couple  of  months.  Much  of  this 
time  was  occupied  in  discussing  the  question  whether  the  recogni- 
tion of  belligerency  or  independence  was  an  executive  or  legisla- 
tive function ;  but  behind  the  constitutional  discussion  lay  two 
divergent  opinions  as  to  the  desirability  of  forcing  a  war  on 
Spain.  Almost  all  the  Democrats  and  a  minority  of  the  Repub- 
licans wanted  to  bring  about  war.  The  recognition  either  of 
belligerency  or  independence  was  a  means  to  that  end.  A  reso- 
lution recognizing  the  belligerency  of  the  Cuban  insurgents 
passed  the  Senate  on  May  20,  1897.  Senator  Hanna,  opposed 
as  he  was  to  war  and  committed  as  he  was  to  the  support  of  the 
President,  voted  uniformly  with  the  minority.  A  very  small 
minority  it  was.  Only  thirteen  Senators  voted  with  him,  while 
forty-one  favored  the  resolution.  The  resolution  itself  was  never 
even  considered  in  the  House  of  Representatives. 

Not,  however,  until  the  following  spring  was  the  Cuban  situa- 
tion to  become  really  critical;  and  the  interval  gave  Congress 
an  opportunity  to  undertake  the  legislation  which  the  President 


THREE  YEARS  OF  TRANSITION  275 

and  Mr.  Hanna  believed  to  be  essential  to  the  cure  of  the  eco- 
nomic depression.  As  it  happened,  the  complexion  of  the  two 
Houses  enabled  the  Republicans  to  pass  a  tariff  bill,  but  pre- 
vented them  from  taking  any  action  on  the  currency.  They  had 
a  large  majority  in  the  House,  but  in  the  Senate  the  balance  of 
power  was  held  by  a  body  of  pro-silver  protectionists  chiefly 
from  the  Far  West.  In  a  little  over  two  weeks  after  the  meeting 
of  Congress,  the  Dingley  Bill  had  been  reported  and  passed  in 
the  House,  only  twenty-two  out  of  its  one  hundred  and  sixty- 
three  pages  being  discussed  in  detail.  The  Senate  was  more 
deliberate,  and  its  contribution  to  the  final  form  in  which  the 
bill  was  enacted  was  correspondingly  substantial.  The  bill  was 
not  reported  until  the  eighth  of  May,  and  it  was  not  signed  by 
the  President  until  July  24. 

The  Republican  leaders  in  both  Houses  desired  to  pass  a  bill 
which,  while  raising  the  rates,  would  not  run  any  danger  of  in- 
curring the  unpopularity  of  the  McKinley  Bill.  But  they  were 
obliged  ultimately  to  accept  a  series  of  schedules  which  ranged 
higher  than  they  intended.  The  wool  schedule  was  the  heart 
of  the  matter.  By  a  combination  between  Senators  represent- 
ing woollen  manufacturing  states  and  those  representing  wool 
growing  states,  who  were  none  other  than  the  pro-silver  protec- 
tionists, the  duties  on  wool  and  the  compensating  plus  the  pro- 
tective duties  on  woollen  goods  were  restored  to  about  the  level 
of  the  McKinley  Bill.  On  cotton  goods  the  general  tendency 
was  to  impose  slightly  lower  duties  than  those  of  1890.  On  silks 
and  linens,  on  the  other  hand,  the  changes  were  radical,  and  the 
duties  higher  than  ever  before  in  the  history  of  the  country.  On 
chinaware  the  rates  of  1890  were  restored,  whereas  most  of  the 
metal  duties  were  left  very  much  as  they  had  been  in  1894. 

Whatever  opinion  one  may  form  either  of  the  political  or 
economic  desirability  of  the  Dingley  Bill,  it  apparently  served 
the  purpose  of  its  progenitors.  Increasing  business  activity 
followed  upon  its  enactment;  and  the  high  protectionists  sin- 
cerely believed  that  without  such  a  stimulus  President  McKin- 
ley would  never  have  proved  to  be  the  advance  agent  of  prosper- 
ity. Senator  Hanna,  of  course,  warmly  approved  the  changes 
proposed  by  the  bill,  but  just  how  much  influence  he  had  upon 
its  details  cannot  be  traced  by  any  public  indications.  He  was 


276      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

not  a  member  of  the  Finance  Committee,  and  not  once  did  he 
open  his  mouth  during  the  public  discussion  of  the  schedules. 
His  colleague,  Senator  Foraker,  in  a  speech  made  on  the  stump 
during  the  fall  of  1897,  gave  the  following  description  of  Mr. 
Hanna's  contribution  to  the  making  of  the  Dingley  Bill.  "No 
man  not  on  the  Committee  did  more  than  Senator  Hanna  to  win 
the  success  that  was  achieved.  I  doubt  if  any  other  man  did  as 
much.  He  devoted  himself  with  assiduity  to  the  study  of  the 
various  schedules.  He  listened  with  patience  to  the  claims  and 
appeals  of  all,  and  with  rare  good  judgment  aided  the  Committee 
and  the  Senate  in  reaching  just  conclusions."  Only  slight 
changes  were  made  in  those  schedules  in  which  his  own  firm  was 
financially  interested.  The  rates  on  iron  ore  remained  at  forty 
cents  a  ton,  and  that  on  pig-iron  at  four  dollars.  The  duty  on 
coal  was  increased  from  forty  to  sixty-five  cents  a  ton,  but  it  was 
not  restored  to  the  level  of  1890,  which  had  been  seventy-five  cents 
a  ton. 

Senator  Hanna's  only  appearance  in  public  during  this  first 
session  of  the  fifty-fifth  Congress  was  for  the  purpose  of  calling 
up  a  bill,  introduced  by  himself  and  providing  for  a  new  public 
building  in  Cleveland.  It  was  passed  without  opposition.  Of 
course,  he  also  introduced  a  number  of  private  pension  bills. 
The  committees  to  which  he  was  assigned  included  that  on 
Enrolled  Bills,  Mines  and  Mining,  Naval  Affairs,  Pensions,  Rail- 
roads and  the  Select  Committee  on  Transportation  and  Sale 
of  Meat  Products.  During  the  second  session  of  the  same  Con- 
gress Mr.  Hanna  remained  in  the  background.  Not  once  did 
he  address  the  Senate.  His  behavior  was  doubtless  dictated  by 
his  wise  preference  for  silence  when  he  could  not  speak  with 
authority  and  effect. 

If  he  did  not  speak  during  the  second  session  of  the  fifty-fifth 
Congress,  it  was  not  because  the  course  of  events  failed  to  in- 
terest him.  It  was  during  this  session  that  the  stubborn  pur- 
pose of  President  McKinley  and  his  Cabinet  to  avoid  war 
proved  abortive.  The  intention  of  the  Republican  leaders  had 
been  to  transact  only  necessary  business,  and  then  to  adjourn 
early,  if  possible  by  May  1.  They  wanted  to  avoid  any  further 
agitation  until  the  slowly  rising  wind  of  business  activity  had 
scattered  the  fruits  of  "prosperity  "  over  the  whole  country; 


THREE   YEARS   OF   TRANSITION  277 

and  above  all,  they  sought  to  leave  the  administration  free  to 
deal  with  the  Cuban  situation  without  interference  from  Con- 
gress. These  plans  were  frustrated  by  the  increasing  fury  of  the 
demand  for  intervention  in  Cuba;  and  after  February  15,  the 
date  on  which  the  Maine  was  blown  up  in  the  harbor  of  Havana, 
it  became  extremely  doubtful  whether  a  war  with  Spain  could  be 
avoided.  Indeed,  war  became  certain,  in  case  the  investigation 
indicated  that  the  explosion  which  wrecked  the  vessel  and  killed 
the  crew  could  be  traced  to  a  source  outside  of  its  hull. 

Before,  however,  the  critical  phase  of  the  Cuban  situation  was 
reached,  the  Senate  was  occupied  with  certain  routine  business. 
The  way  in  which  Mr.  Hanna  voted  upon  several  of  these 
matters  must  be  recorded  as  indicating  his  attitude  upon  public 
questions.  In  the  first  place  he  voted  in  favor  of  Senator  Lodge's 
bill,  imposing  an  educational  qualification  on  immigrants ;  and 
in  casting  the  vote  he  had  with  him,  not  only  his  regular  Repub- 
lican associates,  but  a  majority  of  the  Senate.  In  the  second 
place  he  voted  in  favor  of  seating  in  the  Senate  one  Henry  W. 
Corbett,  who  had  been  appointed  Senator  from  the  state  of 
Oregon  by  a  Republican  governor,  after  the  failure  of  a  Demo- 
cratic Legislature,  because  of  Republican  abstentions,  to  elect  a 
Democrat.  This  was  a  matter  on  which  there  was  some  division 
of  opinion  among  the  abler  constitutional  lawyers  in  the  Senate, 
Mr.  Spooner  being  in  favor  of  seating  Mr.  Corbett  and  Mr.  Platt 
of  Connecticut  being  against  it.  Mr.  Hanna's  vote  is  interest- 
ing, chiefly  because  of  his  subsequent  vote  in  relation  to  a 
similar  question  affecting  the  title  of  Senator  Quay  of  Pennsyl- 
vania to  his  seat.  Finally  on  January  28  Mr.  Hanna  was  one  of 
a  minority  of  twenty-four  who  during  a  discussion  of  a  currency 
resolution,  raised  for  political  purposes,  voted  in  favor  of  the 
payment  of  all  bonds  of  the  United  States  in  gold  coin  or  its 
equivalent. 

In  the  meantime  the  administration  was  unable  to  stem  the 
tide  which  both  in  Congress  and  the  country  was  making  for 
war.  Up  to  the  last  moment  the  President  sought  to  find  some 
middle  ground.  He  sought  to  placate  American  public  opinion 
by  acting  energetically  on  behalf  of  American  citizens  in  Cuba, 
and  by  pressing  Spain  to  improve  its  conduct  of  the  war  and  to 
redress  the  grievances  of  its  Cuban  subjects.  If  the  Maine  had 


278      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

not  been  blown  up,  he  might  have  succeeded,  for  Spain  was  willing 
to  make  almost  any  concession  which  did  not  actually  terminate 
its  possession  of  Cuba.  As  it  was,  the  President  risked  his  popu- 
larity and  the  confidence  of  the  country  by  his  reluctance  to 
abandon  a  peaceful  solution.  He  has  been  severely  criticised 
for  not  holding  out  until  the  end ;  but  had  he  done  so,  he  might 
well  have  ruined  his  administration  and  split  his  party  without 
actually  preserving  peace.  Congress  wanted  war  and  had  the 
power  to  declare  it.  The  people  were  willing.  If  war  had  been 
declared,  in  spite  of  his  opposition,  neither  Congress  nor  the  coun- 
try would  have  had  sufficient  confidence  in  him  as  the  com- 
mander-in-chief  of  its  army  and  navy. 

In  the  end  the  President  consented  to  a  reversal  of  policy, 
which  squared  badly  with  the  spirit  and  purpose  of  his  earlier 
negotiations  with  Spain.  Such  was  the  price  which  Mr.  McKin- 
ley  and  the  country  had  to  pay  for  his  erroneous  estimate  of  the 
general  situation.  Public  opinion  had  come  to  believe  that  the 
independence  of  Cuba  was  the  only  satisfactory  cure  for  the 
maladies  of  Cuba ;  and  it  was  willing,  if  necessary,  to  fight  for 
that  conviction.  The  President  had  made  the  kind  of  a  mistake 
which,  in  case  he  had  been  an  English  Prime  Minister,  would  have 
forced  him  to  resign  and  to  pass  on  his  executive  responsibility  ; 
but  as  an  American  President,  faced  by  a  question  of  war  or 
peace,  he  had  no  such  alternative.  He  was  obliged  to  turn  war- 
rior and  keep  the  country's  confidence  as  the  commander-in-chief 
of  its  army  and  navy. 

Senator  Hanna's  attitude  absolutely  coincided  with  that  of 
the  President.  The  outbreak  of  war  seemed  to  imperil  the  whole 
policy  of  domestic  -  economic  amelioration  which  he  placed  be- 
fore every  other  object  of  political  action.  He  expected  that  it 
would  check  and  perhaps  extinguish  the  tendency  towards  busi- 
ness recovery  which  had  really  gathered  some  headway  during 
the  early  months  of  1898.  His  fears  were  groundless.  The 
Spanish  War  in  its  immediate  effect  helped  and  strengthened  the 
conscious  and  unconscious  forces  in  American  life,  upon  which 
the  realization  of  his  favorite  economic  policy  happened  at  that 
juncture  to  depend.  The  uncertainties  of  the  war  and  the  re- 
sulting increase  in  taxation  no  doubt  checked  the  returning  tide 
of  prosperity,  but  only  for  a  short  time.  On  the  other  hand,  a 


THREE  YEARS  OF  TRANSITION  279 

foreign  enemy  served  to  distract  attention  from  the  deep-lying 
domestic  dissensions  which  had  been  exposed  by  the  campaign 
of  1896.  The  pulse  of  the  country  was  quickened  by  its  little 
adventure.  The  sense  of  common  national  feeling  and  interest, 
which  becomes  weak  and  dull  after  a  generation  of  economic 
sectional  and  class  conflicts,  was  reawakened,  and  the  new  vital- 
ity imparted  to  the  national  consciousness  was  bound  to  work 
in  favor  of  a  party  and  an  administration  which  represented  the 
traditional  national  economic  policy. 

In  spite  of  the  inefficient  management  of  the  war,  the  adminis- 
tration pulled  through  this  troubled  period  credited  with  an  in- 
crease in  public  confidence.  By  virtue  of  this  access  of  popu- 
larity it  obtained  a  freer  hand  in  dealing  with  questions  of 
domestic  policy.  In  the  absence  of  a  war  with  Spain,  it  is  at 
least  doubtful  whether  such  would  have  been  the  case.  If  the 
Dingley  Bill  failed  to  have  the  same  effect  upon  the  political 
fortunes  of  its  creators  as  the  McKinley,  Wilson  and  Payne- 
Aldrich  bills,  the  war  rather  than  the  provisions  of  that  measure 
may  be  considered  partly  responsible.  The  congressional  and 
state  elections  of  the  fall  of  1898  were  favorable  to  the  Republi- 
cans. They  retained  their  control  of  the  lower  House  and  gained 
the  control  of  the  Senate.  The  still  more  decisive  victory  which 
followed  in  the  presidential  campaign  of  1900  was  as  much  the 
effect  of  the  war  as  it  was  of  the  revival  of  prosperity. 

The  foregoing  remarks  are  true,  not  only  of  the  war,  but  of 
the  immediate  political  consequences  of  the  war.  Both  Mr. 
McKinley  and  Mr.  Hanna  would  have  been  glad  to  avoid  the 
risks  and  the  complications  involved  by  the  acquisition  of  the 
Philippines  and  Puerto  Rico.  The  policy  of  extra-territorial 
expansion  did  not  harmonize  with  the  President's  inherited 
phrases.  But  he  was  enough  of  a  realist  in  politics  to  know  a 
Solemn  Fact  when  it  was  forced  upon  his  attention.  Under 
the  influence  of  men  like  Senator  Orville  Platt,  he  finally  con- 
sented to  accept  responsibility  for  an  American  Colonial  policy. 
In  the  end  both  he  and  Mr.  Hanna  became  convinced  Imperial- 
ists ;  and  their  Imperialism  may  have  been  due  to  a  final  under- 
standing of  the  close  relation  between  the  traditions  of  the  Re- 
publican party  and  a  policy  of  national  expansion.  A  party 
which  originated  in  the  deliberate  assumption  of  a  neglected 


280      MAECUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

national  responsibility  cannot  well  avoid  the  assumption  of  new 
responsibilities,  whenever  such  a  course  is  dictated  by  a  legiti- 
mate national  interest. 

In  the  meantime  Mr.  Hanna  was  very  slowly  and  tentatively 
developing  his  own  legislative  preferences  and  was  finding,  as  it 
were,  his  senatorial  legs.  During  the  third  and  final  session  of 
the  fifty-fifth  Congress  he  began  to  appear  in  more  conspicu- 
ous parts  than  that  of  a  silent  voter.  On  Dec.  19,  1898,  he 
introduced  a  bill  "to  promote  the  commerce  and  increase  the 
foreign  trade  of  the  United  States  and  to  provide  auxiliary 
cruisers,  transports  and  seamen  for  government  use,  when 
necessary."  This  measure  which  came  finally  to  be  known  as 
the  Hanna-Frye  Subsidy  Bill,  and  which  was  very  much  amended 
before  it  emerged  from  the  Committee  on  Commerce,  never 
came  to  a  discussion,  much  less  a  vote,  during  the  fifty-fifth 
Congress.  It  embodied  a  policy  in  which  Senator  Hanna  be- 
came more  and  more  interested  and  which  must  be  considered 
his  legislative  hobby.  He  had  already  been  preaching  on  the 
stump  the  desirability  of  some  governmental  subsidy  for  the 
American  merchant  marine,  and  he  continued  to  do  so  until 
the  end.  The  reasons  for  its  peculiar  importance  in  Senator 
Hanna's  eyes  will  be  explained  in  a  later  chapter. 

It  must  not  go  unrecorded,  also,  that  during  this  final  session 
of  the  fifty-fifth  Congress  Senator  Hanna  first  appeared  as  a 
speaker  on  the  floor  of  the  Senate.  The  occasion  of  his  appear- 
ance is  characteristic  of  the  man.  Its  object  was  to  perform 
a  service  for  an  insignificant  but  deserving  person  who,  as  he 
believed,  was  not  being  fairly  treated.  A  German-American 
named  Louis  Gathmann  had  invented  a  so-called  aerial  torpedo 
which  he  had  submitted  to  the  Bureau  of  Ordinance  of  the  Navy 
Department.  Making  no  impression  on  its  chief,  Mr.  Gathmann 
took  his  story  to  the  Naval  Committee  of  the  Senate,  of  which 
Senator  Hanna  was  a  member,  and  aroused  the  Senator's  inter- 
est. By  means  of  Mr.  Hanna's  influence  with  Assistant  Secre- 
tary Roosevelt,  the  inventor  obtained  a  chance  to  test  his  shell 
at  the  proving  grounds  of  the  navy  at  Indian  Head,  Maryland. 
Several  other  tests  followed  which  convinced  Senator  Hanna 
that  the  "Gathmann  Torpedo"  was  a  good  thing.  He  sub- 
mitted an  amendment  to  the  naval  appropriation  bill,  author- 


THREE  YEARS  OF  TRANSITION  281 

izing  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy  to  spend  $250,000  in  equipping 
two  coast  defence  monitors  with  the  shells.  The  amendment 
was  not  mandatory,  but  placed  the  spending  of  the  money  at  the 
discretion  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy.  Mr.  Hanna's  asso- 
ciates on  the  Naval  Committee  agreed  to  this  recommendation. 
There  were  some  objections  to  it  in  the  Senate,  and  Mr.  Hanna 
on  several  occasions  spoke  briefly  in  its  favor.  The  appropria- 
tion was  adopted  in  the  Senate,  rejected  by  the  House  and 
failed  in  conference.  Mr.  Hanna's  only  interest  in  the  matter 
was  derived  from  his  confidence  in  the  inventor  and  his  belief 
that  a  prejudice  against  the  inventor  by  the  navy  and  army 
chiefs  had  prevented  the  "Gathmann  Torpedo"  from  obtaining 
a  fair  trial. 

As  soon  as  Congress  adjourned,  Senator  Hanna,  accompanied 
by  his  family,  went  for  over  a  month  to  Thomasville,  Georgia, 
where  President  McKinley  and  others  were  entertained  as  his 
guests.  His  health  at  this  time  was  not  as  good  as  it  had  been, 
and  he  was  taking  what  opportunity  he  could  of  rest  and  recrea- 
tion. By  May  he  was  in  Cleveland  again,  but  not  for  long.  He 
was  planning  a  trip  abroad,  — the  first  which  he  had  ever  taken, — 
for  the  purpose  of  seeking  some  alleviation  for  his  increasingly 
frequent  rheumatic  attacks.  When  he  was  about  to  start,  it 
looked  as  if  the  trip  would  have  to  be  abandoned,  because  a 
serious  strike  was  threatened  on  the  Cleveland  street  railway, 
which  competed  with  the  one  of  which  he  was  President.  But 
the  employees  of  his  own  company  proved  loyal  to  the  manage- 
ment, and  Senator  Hanna  was  able  to  get  away.  He  returned 
in  the  fall,  not  particularly  pleased  and  benefited  by  the  trip, 
and  resolute  never  to  go  to  Europe  again. 

When  the  fifty-sixth  Congress  assembled  in  December,  1899, 
the  Republicans  were  in  a  position  to  exercise  much  more  com- 
plete control  and  to  adopt  a  more  vigorous  policy  than  they  had 
during  the  fifty-fifth  Congress.  Their  majority  in  the  House 
had  been  maintained;  and  they  had  gained  in  the  meantime 
a  majority  in  the  Senate  sufficient  for  all  party  purposes.  The 
session  was  one  of  the  utmost  importance,  less  because  of  the 
large  amount  of  legislation  accomplished,  than  because  the  pol- 
icy of  the  government  in  dealing  with  Puerto  Rico  and  the  insu- 
lar dependencies  was  established  —  not,  to  be  sure,  in  its  details, 


282      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS  LIFE   AND   WORK 

but  in  its  general  outlines.  A  bill  was  passed  organizing  a 
territorial  government  for  the  Hawaiian  Islands  and  defining 
temporarily  the  fiscal  relations  between  Puerto  Rico  and  the 
United  States.  It  was  this  bill  which  provoked  the  most  pro- 
longed and  virulent  debate.  It  raised  both  a  legal  question  as 
to  the  extent  of  congressional  authority  in  the  insular  depend- 
encies and  how  far  it  was  subject  to  constitutional  restric- 
tions, and  the  economic  question  whether  as  a  matter  of  policy 
Congress  should  impose  any  tariff  on  imports  from  Puerto  Rico 
into  the  United  States. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  Senator  Raima's  life  these  questions 
do  not  have  to  be  discussed  on  their  merits,  because,  as  has  al- 
ready been  pointed  out,  he  was  in  relation  to  them  a  follower 
rather  than  a  leader.  Throughout  all  these  long  debates,  ex- 
tending over  so  many  months,  during  which  the  legal  abilities 
of  Senator  Spooner  and  others  were  conspicuously  expressed, 
and  during  which  the  senior  Senator  from  Ohio,  Mr.  Foraker, 
also  displayed  talents  of  a  high  order,  Senator  Hanna  did  not 
break  his  silence.  He  voted,  of  course,  throughout  for  the 
orthodox  Republican  policy ;  and  the  aspect  of  the  matter  with 
which  he  was  most  concerned  was  its  effect  upon  the  coming 
presidential  campaign. 

Another  question  which  the  fifty-sixth  Congress  at  its  first 
session  effectually  disposed  of  was  that  of  the  standard  of  value. 
Inasmuch  as  the  Republicans  were  for  the  first  time  in  absolute 
control  of  both  Houses,  they  were  in  a  position  to  redeem  their 
pledges  and  to  establish  gold  as  the  statutory  standard  of  value 
of  the  United  States.  This  they  did  not  hesitate  to  do,  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  an  election  was  coming  on.  They  felt  that  they 
had  the  country  behind  them.  They  had  weathered  the  squalls 
of  the  Spanish  War.  The  business  prosperity  of  the  country 
had  really  been  restored,  and  there  was  every  evidence  that  a 
still  further  business  expansion  would  follow.  Prices  had  in- 
creased, but  so  had  wages.  A  general  air  of  satisfaction  was 
overspreading  the  country.  It  was  just  the  time  to  redeem  the 
pledge  of  1896,  and  to  establish  the  gold  standard,  not  merely 
as  a  matter  of  policy,  but  with  a  definite  legal  sanction. 

In  the  debates  on  the  currency  bill  Senator  Hanna  did  not 
break  the  silence,  which  with  but  one  insignificant  exception 


THREE  YEARS  OF  TRANSITION  283 

had  characterized  his  behavior  in  the  Senate.  The  occasion 
had  not  yet  come  for  his  appearance  in  public  as  a  senatorial 
leader,  although  it  was  fast  approaching.  His  public  attitude 
and  behavior  is  of  importance  in  relation  to  only  three  incidents 
of  the  session;  and  these  incidents  differ  widely  one  from 
another  in  their  relative  importance  and  in  their  subject-matter. 

The  first  of  these  questions  concerned  the  title  of  Mr. 
Matthew  S.  Quay  of  Pennsylvania  to  a  seat  in  the  Senate.  Mr. 
Quay's  term  as  Senator  had  expired  on  March  3,  1899.  The 
Legislature  began  to  ballot  upon  his  successor  on  January  17. 
Daily  ballots  were  taken  from  that  date  until  April  20,  the  day 
of  adjournment,  no  candidate  having  in  the  meantime  received 
a  majority  of  the  votes.  Mr.  Quay  was  the  caucus  nominee  of 
his  party,  but  a  sufficiently  strong  minority  of  "  insurgents,"  who 
objected  to  his  political  methods  and  record,  had  persisted  in 
supporting  another  candidate.  The  day  after  the  Legislature 
adjourned  Governor  Stone  appointed  Mr.  Quay  Senator  un- 
til the  next  meeting  of  the  Legislature.  A  question  was 
immediately  raised  as  to  the  legality  of  the  appointment ;  and 
on  Jan.  23,  1900,  the  Committee  on  Privileges  and  Elec- 
tions of  the  Senate  reported  a  resolution  to  the  effect  that  Mr. 
Quay  was  not  legally  entitled  to  the  seat.  The  question  was 
exhaustively  debated  during  the  following  three  months  and 
did  not  reach  a  final  vote  until  April  24.  On  that  day  the  report 
of  the  Committee  was  adopted  by  a  vote  of  33  to  32,  so  that  Mr. 
Quay's  claim  to  the  seat  was  denied.  Mr.  Hanna  was  paired 
with  Senator  Depew  on  this  roll-call,  and  although  not  present, 
his  vote  counted  against  Mr.  Quay.  Had  he  voted  the  other 
way,  the  latter  would  have  been  seated. 

The  incident  is  of  interest  because  it  raised  important  politi- 
cal as  well  as  legal  issues.  A  grave  and  ambiguous  Constitu- 
tional question  was  involved.  State  Governors  have  the  power, 
in  case  vacancies  occur  during  a  recess  of  the  Legislature,  to 
"make  temporary  appointments  until  the  next  meeting  of  the 
Legislature,  which  shall  then  fill  such  vacancies";  but  in  this 
instance  the  vacancy  had  occurred  during  a  session  of  the  Legis- 
lature and  the  Legislature  had  failed  to  fill  it.  Does  the  Gov- 
ernor's power  of  appointment  extend  to  cases  in  which  a 
Legislature  has  had  the  opportunity  of  electing  a  Senator  and 


284      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

has  failed  to  take  advantage  of  it?  While  there  were  prece- 
dents on  both  sides,  the  weight  of  authority  tended  against  any 
such  interpretation  of  the  Governor's  power.  In  the  same  way 
the  abler  Constitutional  lawyers  in  the  Senate  were  for  the  most 
part  opposed  to  the  seating  of  Mr.  Quay.  Nevertheless  they 
were  far  from  unanimous  in  their  opinion.  Senators  Hoar  and 
Spooner,  for  instance,  believed  that  Mr.  Quay  was  entitled  to 
his  seat.  In  casting  their  votes,  individual  Senators  were  evi- 
dently influenced  by  great  diversity  of  motives.  The  majority 
of  the  Republicans  voted  for  Mr.  Quay  and  the  majority  of  the 
Democrats  against  him,  but  among  the  pro-Quay  Democratic 
minority  were  some  of  the  better  lawyers  and  more  public-spirited 
Senators  in  the  party,  while  among  the  anti-Quay  Republican 
minority  were  Senators  as  different  as  Hale,  Gallinger,  Hawley, 
Orville  Platt,  Proctor  and  McMillan. 

The  question  was  one  on  which  party  lines  were  not  decisively 
drawn,  and  on  which  a  Senator  might  have  voted  either  way  in 
good  company.  A  vote,  actually  determined  by  considerations 
of  political  or  party  expediency,  could  be  defended  by  plausible 
legal  arguments.  A  man  in  Senator  Hanna 's  personal  position 
would  naturally  allow  his  vote  in  reference  to  an  ambiguous 
legal  question  to  be  determined  chiefly  by  a  group  of  political 
considerations,  which  might  well  have  dictated  the  indorsement 
of  Mr.  Quay's  claim.  Mr.  Hanna  believed  in  party  organiza- 
tion and  party  loyalty.  Quay  was  the  caucus  nominee.  His 
opponents  were  insurgent  reformers,  who  had  bolted  a  regular 
nomination,  and  who  were  making  trouble  within  the  party  just 
previous  to  a  National  Convention  to  be  held  in  Philadelphia 
and  a  presidential  campaign.  The  question  wTas  being  judged 
all  over  the  country,  not  on  legal  but  on  political  grounds.  The 
bolters  were  being  praised,  because  they  had  dared  to  defy  the 
caucus,  in  order  to  defeat  for  Senator  a  political  "boss"  of  doubt- 
ful integrity.  Mr.  Banna's  own  election  had  been  opposed  by 
analogous  methods  and  on  ostensibly  similar  grounds.  Two 
years  earlier  Mr.  Hanna  had  supported  the  claim  of  a  Senator 
from  Oregon  whose  legal  title  to  the  seat  was  of  the  same  gen- 
eral character  as  that  of  Mr.  Quay.  Nevertheless  he  voted 
against  Mr.  Quay  and  thereby  incurred  the  embarrassing  hostil- 
ity of  a  man  who  continued  to  be  powerful  in  an  important 


THREE  YEARS  OF  TRANSITION  285 

Republican  state.  When  Mr.  Quay's  name  was  read  aloud  in 
the  Philadelphia  Convention  as  the  member  of  the  National 
Committee  from  Pennsylvania,  the  applause  consumed  several 
minutes. 

His  vote  cannot  be  explained  on  the  ground  of  any  former 
antagonism  between  the  two  men.  Mr.  Hanna  was  the  last 
person  in  the  world  to  allow  a  personal  quarrel  to  interfere  with 
desirable  action  in  the  interest  of  Republican  harmony.  Neither 
was  his  vote  likely  to  be  dictated  merely  by  technical  Constitu- 
tional reasons,  although  these  may  have  had  some  weight.  He 
must  have  believed  that  a  Governor  has  no  right  to  fill  a  vacancy 
in  the  Senate  with  a  man  whom  the  Legislature  might  have 
elected,  but  instead  deliberately  took  the  opportunity  of  reject- 
ing. Such  a  belief  would  have  squared  with  the  dependence, 
characteristic  of  his  political  methods  upon  the  support  of  public 
opinion. 

Mr.  Hanna  never  left  any  public  record  of  the  reason  for  his 
anti-Quay  vote,  but  soon  thereafter  a  question  did  come  up, 
which  aroused  him  to  participate  in  a  somewhat  important 
Senate  debate.  This  question  was  connected  with  the  adminis- 
tration of  the  Navy  Department.  It  will  be  recollected  that  his 
one  previous  utterance  in  the  Senate  chamber  concerned  a  small 
detail  in  the  business  of  the  same  department.  Ever  since  his 
appointment  as  Senator,  he  had  been  a  member  of  the  Com- 
mittee on  Naval  Affairs.  He  had  devoted  a  good  deal  of  time 
to  the  work  of  the  Committee;  and  as  a  large  portion  of  it  in- 
volved the  sort  of  business  questions  with  which  he  was  pecul- 
iarly competent  to  deal,  he  became  very  influential  in  the 
Committee  and  finally  took  part  in  the  public  discussion  of 
naval  affairs. 

The  immediate  cause  of  his  first  important  intervention  in  the 
public  debates  was  a  disagreement  that  had  arisen  over  the  price 
which  the  government  was  to  pay  for  armor-plate.  The  occa- 
sion of  this  interference,  its  purpose  and  its  spirit  are  all  charac- 
teristic of  the  man.  The  House  had  differed  from  the  Senate, 
not  only  as  to  the  price  which  the  government  ought  to  pay  for 
armor-plate,  but  also  as  to  the  source  from  which  it  should  be 
procured.  There  were  only  two  plants  in  the  United  States 
equipped  for  its  manufacture  —  those  of  the  Carnegie  and  Beth- 


286      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

lehem  companies;  and  they  did  not  compete  with  each  other. 
They  had  both  been  insisting  on  charging  $545  a  ton  on  all  con- 
tracts for  plate.  The  Senate  believed  that  this  charge  was 
extortionate.  It  had,  consequently,  amended  the  House  Bill, 
which  made  the  price  discretionary  with  the  Secretary  of  the 
Navy,  in  a  very  radical  way.  It  had  insisted  that  in  case  the 
Secretary  could  not  obtain  armor-plate  for  $445  a  ton,  he  should 
proceed  with  the  construction  of  a  government  factory.  When 
the  bill  went  into  conference,  the  conferrees  could  not  reach  any 
agreement  in  reference  to  this  difference,  and  they  returned  to 
their  respective  Houses  for  further  instructions. 

While  the  Senate  was  discussing  the  question  whether  it 
should  insist  upon  its  own  provisions  or  make  certain  conces- 
sions, Mr.  Hanna  took  part  in  the  debate.  He  was  evidently 
provoked  because  certain  Senators,  who  had  no  technical 
knowledge  of  steel  manufacturing,  had  jumped  without  suffi- 
cient inquiry  to  the  conclusion  that  the  price  was  extortionate. 
The  purpose  of  his  speech  was  to  insist  that  the  price  of  $445 
a  ton,  under  the  conditions  then  prevailing,  was  a  low  rather  than 
a  high  price,  that  a  government  factory  could  not  be  built  inside 
of  five  years,  that,  if  constructed,  government  plate  would  cost 
more  than  plate  manufactured  by  the  Carnegie  or  the  Bethle- 
hem companies,  and  that  the  whole  question  was  one  which 
should  be  left,  as  the  House  of  Representatives  proposed,  to  the 
discretion  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy.  His  argument  was 
made  with  force  and  with  effect.  He  was  constantly  interrupted 
by  Senator  Tillman  and  others,  and  at  one  juncture  he  pro- 
tested against  these  interruptions  because  he  was  a  "tyro"  in 
debating  and  wanted  "half  a  chance."  Nevertheless  he  held  his 
own  very  well.  He  was  particularly  tenacious  in  sticking  to  the 
main  thread  of  his  discourse,  in  spite  of  many  attempts  to  raise 
irrelevant  issues.  The  only  action  immediately  taken  by  the 
Senate  was  to  send  the  bill  back  to  conference. 

Again  the  attempt  to  reach  an  agreement  in  conference 
failed,  whereupon  Senator  Penrose  proposed  that  the  question  of 
a  "reasonable  and  equitable"  price  be  left  to  the  Secretary  of 
the  Navy,  but  he  was  required,  in  the  event  of  failure  to  purchase 
on  reasonable  terms,  to  build  a  factory.  Mr.  Hanna  spoke  in 
favor  of  this  amendment,  which  corresponded  much  more  closely 


THREE  YEARS  OF  TRANSITION  287 

with  his  views  than  did  the  previous  action  of  the  Senate.  After 
an  acrid  discussion  in  which  the  Democrats  freely  accused  their 
opponents  of  favoring  the  armor-plate  companies  in  return  for 
campaign  contributions,  the  Penrose  amendment  was  adopted 
by  a  vote  of  39  to  35.  A  number  of  Republican  Senators,  includ- 
ing Beveridge,  Foraker,  Perkins,  Chandler  and  Spooner,  voted 
with  the  Democrats.  To  all  appearances  Mr.  Hanna's  inter- 
ference on  this  occasion  served  to  determine  the  Senate's  final 
action.  Until  he  spoke  the  tendency  both  of  the  discussion  of 
the  subject  and  of  the  several  votes  had  been  to  preclude  any 
agreement  with  the  armor-plate  companies.  A  proposal  to  build 
a  government  factory,  in  case  they  would  not  accept  a  price 
of  $400  a  ton,  had  been  defeated  by  a  majority  of  only  two.  Mr. 
Hanna  was  the  first  Senator  to  come  out  vigorously  and  un- 
equivocally for  a  policy  of  making  a  compromise  with  the  com- 
panies. The  Penrose  amendment  virtually  repudiated  the  atti- 
tude which  for  some  years  the  Senate  had  assumed  on  the  matter. 
It  was  intended  to  bring  about  the  actual  purchase  of  the 
armor-plate  imperatively  needed  by  the  government.  This 
policy  prevailed;  and  it  prevailed  chiefly  by  virtue  of  Mr. 
Hanna/s  arguments  and  influence. 

The  policy  openly  and  successfully  advocated  by  Mr.  Hanna 
in  this  matter  was  the  natural  result  of  his  political  and  eco- 
nomic creed.  As  a  man  trained  hi  business  he  knew  that  the  ques- 
tion of  what  was  or  was  not  a  reasonable  price  for  armor-plate 
was  one  which  should  be  left  to  a  responsible  administrative 
official.  He  believed  that  the  Senate  had  been  acting  on  erron- 
eous information  in  placing  such  a  low  limit  upon  a  reasonable 
price  for  armor-plate.  What  he  knew  of  the  steel  and  iron  busi- 
ness convinced  him  that  the  manufacturers  had  not  been  extor- 
tionate in  their  demands ;  and,  of  course,  he  instinctively  sym- 
pathized with  the  point  of  view  of  a  business  man.  But  it 
required  some  courage  to  announce  these  opinions.  The  armor- 
plate  companies  were  unpopular.  He  could  and  would  be 
charged  with  favoring  for  partisan  benefit  a  manufacturing  in- 
terest which  was  seeking  to  bleed  the  Treasury ;  and  in  answer- 
ing these  charges  he  was  at  a  disadvantage,  because  he  could  not 
appeal  to  any  authentic  figures  in  support  of  his  opinion.  He 
was  obliged  to  rely  upon  personal  estimates  which  differed  from 


288      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS    LIFE   AND    WORK 

those  of  Republican  colleagues  on  the  Naval  Committee.  More- 
over, he  went  too  far  in  his  defence  of  the  armor-plate  companies 
when  he  asserted  that  the  government  was  not  entitled  to  accu- 
rate information  from  the  companies'  books  as  to  the  cost  of  the 
plate.  When  pressed  on  this  point  during  the  debate,  he  tended 
to  back  down.  But  he  was  sincere  in  his  conviction  that  the 
interests  of  the  navy  demanded  an  agreement  with  the  com- 
panies; and  the  history  of  the  subsequent  relations  between 
the  government  and  the  plate-makers  indicates  that  he  was 
right. 

With  a  national  campaign  impending,  the  Democrats  imme- 
diately took  advantage  of  the  opening  to  charge  that  the  action 
of  the  Senator  was  dictated  by  the  necessities  of  the  chairman 
of  the  National  Committee.  He  accepted  the  challenge  without 
flinching.  He  never  sought  to  disguise  the  fact  that  he  repre- 
sented business  interests  in  politics  or  to  shirk  responsibility  for 
his  opinions.  On  this  particular  occasion  there  resulted  an 
acrimonious  and  disagreeable  personal  quarrel.  During  the 
debate  Senator  Pettigrew  of  South  Dakota  had  stated  that  in 
1892  a  manufacturer  of  war-ships  had  contributed  $400,000  to 
the  Republican  campaign  fund  upon  the  assurance  that  he 
would  be  reimbursed  from  the  contracts  for  naval  construc- 
tion. The  assertion  aroused  no  immediate  protest,  and  it  was 
later  repeated  by  Senator  Bacon  in  a  debate  upon  an  anti-trust 
bill.  This  time  the  attack  provoked  a  denial  from  Senator 
Carter,  the  chairman  of  the  Republican  National  Committee  hi 
1892,  and  a  general  disclaimer  of  any  relation  between  campaign 
contributions  and  government  contracts  from  Senator  Hanna. 
Senator  Pettigrew  immediately  returned  to  the  charge,  and  after 
reiterating  that  his  information  was  derived  from  Mr.  Cramp 
himself,  went  on  to  make  a  personal  attack  upon  Mr.  Hanna. 
He  brought  up  the  report  of  the  Committee  on  Privileges  and 
Elections  in  reference  to  the  validity  of  Mr.  Hanna's  own  seat  in 
the  Senate.  He  quoted  at  length  from  the  minority  report  of 
that  Committee,  which  had  urged  the  desirability  of  further 
investigation.  The  Senate  Committee,  it  will  be  remembered, 
had  refused  to  make  any  investigation  of  its  own,  but  had  dis- 
missed the  whole  matter  on  the  ground  that  the  testimony  taken 
by  the  Committee  of  the  Ohio  State  Senate,  headed  by  Vernon 


THREE  YEARS  OF  TRANSITION  289 

Burke,  was  entirely  inconclusive.  Mr.  Hanna  immediately 
claimed  the  floor  as  a  matter  of  personal  privilege  and  made  the 
following  statement  :  — 

"  Mr.  President  :  I  feel  like  offering  an  apology  to  the  Senate  for 
pursuing  this  subject  any  farther.  The  fact  that  the  Senator  from 
South  Dakota  had  the  document  on  his  desk,  and  the  readiness  with 
which  he  seemed  to  be  prepared  to  take  up  these  questions,  show  that 
it  is  all  a  prearranged  plan.  So  his  statement  that  he  has  been  forced 
into  this  discussion  by  any  remarks  of  mine  goes  for  nothing. 

"  I  wish  to  say  a  few  words  with  reference  to  the  personal  aspects  of 
this  matter.  Of  course  it  is  well  known  to  the  country  that  there  was  a 
pretty  lively  personal  fight  in  Columbus,  and  it  is  also  known,  because 
it  was  given  the  widest  publicity,  that  there  was  a  conspiracy  (to  defeat 
me)  on  the  part  of  the  Democratic  party  and  a  few  traitors  in  the 
Republican  party  of  the  same  nature  and  kind  as  the  gentlemen  from 
South  Dakota. 

"  This  is  the  first  time  I  have  heard  that  report,1  and  I  was  interested 
very  much  hi  the  cunning  devices  that  were  concocted,  as  I  believe, 
out  of  whole  cloth.  The  first  knowledge  I  had  that  anything  of  this 
kind  was  going  on  came  to  me  in  a  publication  of  a  Democratic  evening 
paper  in  Columbus  on  the  evening  of  the  day  when  the  conversation 
so  reported  was  said  to  have  taken  place.  I  immediately  sent  for  a 
reporter  of  the  Associated  Press  and  dictated  a  few  lines  to  the  public, 
denying  in  toto  the  truth  of  any  statement  made  that  I  had  any  connec- 
tion with  it  or  knew  anything  about  it.  That  was  my  case  and  there 
it  has  rested  from  that  day  to  this. 

"As  far  as  the  instigators  of  this  conspiracy  are  concerned  I  have  never 
seen  or  heard  of  them  from  that  day  to  this,  and  as  to  the  perpetrator 
of  the  deed,  it  was  the  Democratic  party  in  the  state  of  Ohio  through 
its  agents  in  the  State  Senate  at  Columbus,  and  its  allies  and  traitors, 
prominent  among  whom  was  this  man  Burke,  from  my  native  city,  who 
upon  every  stump  in  that  campaign  pledged  himself  that  if  elected  to  the 
State  Senate,  it  would  be  his  first  privilege  and  duty,  to  vote  for  me 
for  the  United  States  Senate.  He  got  to  the  Senate  through  these 
promises. 

"  Mr.  President,  with  reference  to  the  investigation  in  the  Legislature, 
Mr.  Burke's  vote  was  the  balance  of  power  in  the  Ohio  Senate.  He 


Pettigrew  had  quoted  from  the  testimony  of  the  Burke  Com- 
mittee as  to  a  telephone  conversation  between  the  alleged  agent  and  a 
"Major"  (Dick  or  Rathbone),  in  which  the  "Major'.'  answered  after 
an  apparent  consultation  with  Mr.  Hanna. 


290      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

was  a  traitor ;  and  he  lent  himself  to  this  conspiracy.  When  the  in- 
vestigation was  ordered  there  was  one  Republican  in  the  Senate,  Mr. 
James  R.  Garfield,  who  was  conceded  the  privilege  of  being  one  of 
the  investigating  Committee.  The  others  composing  the  Committee 
were  three  Democrats  and  this  traitor  Burke.  When  Mr.  Garfield 
made  the  request,  or  the  demand  rather,  that  I  should  be  represented  by 
counsel,  it  was  denied.  Every  particle  of  testimony  produced  before 
that  Committee  was  arranged  beforehand,  and  everything  that  looked 
to  defence  was  stricken  out  or  driven  out." 

I  have  quoted  the  foregoing  statement  because  it  is  the  only 
one  which  Mr.  Hanna  ever  made  in  reference  to  the  bribery 
charge.  The  incident  practically  terminated  therewith,  al- 
though Mr.  Foraker  took  the  floor  for  a  while  with  a  short  de- 
fence of  his  colleague,  based  entirely  upon  Mr.  Garfield's  minor- 
ity report.  The  only  public  echo  of  the  proceedings  was  the 
publication  in  the  Congressional  Record  of  the  testimony  taken 
by  the  Senate  Committee  and  its  report ;  and  that  doubtless  was 
the  chief  object  of  the  Senator  from  South  Dakota.  The 
matter  was  never  pursued  any  farther  either  in  or  out  of  Con- 
gress. As  a  consequence  of  the  attack,  Mr.  Hanna  conceived 
a  lively  resentment  against  Senator  Pettigrew;  and  this  per- 
sonal feeling  influenced,  as  we  shall  see,  his  behavior  during  the 
approaching  Presidential  election.  The  whole  fracas,  which 
took  place  on  June  5,  1900,  was  merely  a  preliminary  skirmish 
in  the  National  campaign,  which  on  that  date  had  already 
been  practically  started. 

By  the  spring  of  1900  the  peculiar  combination  of  personal 
and  political  vicissitudes,  which  for  some  years  had  kept  Mr. 
Hanna  somewhat  in  the  background  of  politics,  had  passed. 
The  Spanish  War  had  come  and  gone.  The  country  was  pre- 
pared to  return  with  quickened  interest  to  the  consideration  of 
its  domestic  problems.  The  issue  between  the  Imperialists  and 
their  opponents  had  still  to  be  fought ;  but  its  discussion  tended 
more  and  more  to  bring  out  the  relation  between  the  adop- 
tion of  a  Colonial  policy  and  the  expansion  of  the  foreign  trade 
of  the  country.  The  American  people  were  becoming  aroused 
to  the  fact  that  the  promised  restoration  of  prosperity  had  taken 
place,  and  also  that  prosperity,  like  economic  famine,  has  its 
dangers  and  its  victims.  Mr.  Hanna's  dominant  interest  in 


THREE  YEARS  OF  TRANSITION  291 

politics  was  centred  on  the  relation  between  politics  and  busi- 
ness, which  the  renewal  of  interest  in  national  economic  prob- 
lems had  again  brought  to  the  front.  He  was  prepared  to 
become  more  conspicuous  than  ever  in  the  discussion  of  these 
problems.  He  was  no  longer  merely  the  political  manager  and 
friend  of  a  Presidential  candidate  or  a  President.  During  the 
three  intervening  years  he  had  slowly  and  quietly  been  estab- 
lishing on  firm  grounds  his  own  personal  power  and  influence  in 
the  new  fields  of  action,  which  had  been  opened  for  him  by  Mr. 
McKinley's  election  to  the  Presidency. 

He  had  made  a  place  for  himself  in  the  Senate.  Little  by 
little  he  had  gained  the  confidence  of  the  leading  members  of 
that  body,  so  that  when  a  proper  occasion  was  offered  he 
assumed  a  share  of  leadership.  Such  an  occasion  was  presented 
by  the  debate  over  the  policy  of  the  Government  in  respect  to 
the  purchase  of  armor-plate.  He  had  seized  it,  and  had  sud- 
denly disclosed  the  amount  of  personal  influence  which  he  had 
acquired  among  his  colleagues.  Never  after  the  first  session  of 
the  fifty-sixth  Congress  was  he  merely  an  apparently  obscure 
voting  member  of  that  body.  Not  being  a  wordy  man  he  did 
not  speak  frequently,  but  he  spoke  whenever  the  occasion  de- 
manded speech  and  always  with  effect.  But  whether  he  spoke 
or  not  he  had  become  one  of  the  half-dozen  men  who  had  be- 
come practically  responsible  for  the  successful  despatch  of  the 
business  of  the  Senate. 

He  had,  since  the  winter  of  1898,  been  established  in  his  leader- 
ship of  his  own  state,  as  well  as  of  the  Senate.  The  outburst  of 
popular  indignation  which  had  helped  him  to  overcome  the  con- 
spiracy to  prevent  his  election  left  him  in  effective  political  con- 
trol of  the  state  of  Ohio ;  and  that  control  he  retained  until  his 
death.  Open  opposition  to  him  within  the  party  practically  dis- 
appeared. He  did  not  attend  the  Convention  held  in  Colum- 
bus on  June  21,  1898,  because  so  soon  after  the  outbreak  of  the 
war,  Congressional  duties  kept  him  in  Washington;  but  his 
absence  did  not  diminish  his  influence.  He  sent  to  that  body  a 
letter  which  is  a  good  illustration  of  partisan  phrase-making, 
and  which  is  quoted  as  an  example  of  his  increasing  ability  to 
work  up  his  fellow-Republicans  with  "ringing"  words :  — 


292      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

WASHINGTON,  D.C.,  June  20. 
"  H.  M.  DAUGHERTY,  ESQ.,  Chairman. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  — 

"I  sincerely  regret  that  my  duties  here  will  prevent  my  ac- 
ceptance of  the  honor  to  preside  at  the  State  Convention  on  the 
21st  instant.  It  is  a  great  disappointment  to  me  and  I  am  only 
reconciled  by  the  consciousness  that  I  am  better  serving  my 
party  by  remaining  at  my  post  in  Washington.  I  am  with  you 
in  spirit  and  offer  as  my  keynote  — '  Republicanism  in  its  broad- 
est, truest  sense  —  devotion  to  principle  and  loyalty  to  party 
organization  —  the  administration  of  President  William  McKin- 
ley  as  a  fulfilment  of  our  pledges  to  the  American  people,  and  as 
a  guarantee  of  the  future  prosperity  of  the  country.' 

"In  offering  my  rights  to  the  Convention  please  convey  to  the 
representatives  of  the  Republicans  of  Ohio  my  high  appreciation 
of  the  compliment  and  honor  they  have  paid  me  and  the  desire 
I  have  to  always  merit  their  confidence  and  respect. 

"Believing  that  wisdom  and  good  judgment  will  control  their 
deliberations  and  with  best  wishes,  I  remain 

"Sincerely  yours, 

"  M.  A.  HANNA." 

He  had,  of  course,  the  best  of  reasons  for  believing  that  wisdom 
and  good  judgment  would  control  their  deliberations. 

During  the  fall  of  1898  no  local  officials  of  any  importance 
were  elected  in  Ohio,  and  Mr.  Hanna  was  under  no  necessity  of 
bestowing  much  attention  on  his  own  state.  His  great  pre- 
occupation was  with  the  outcome  of  the  Congressional  elections. 
In  case  the  Republicans  lost  control  of  the  Lower  House,  as  so 
frequently  happened  on  an  "off  year,"  and  particularly  on  an 
"off  year"  succeeding  the  passage  of  a  tariff  bill  and  a  decisive 
victory,  both  the  prestige  and  the  plans  of  the  administration 
would  be  very  seriously  damaged.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  was 
serious  danger  of  such  a  loss.  The  popularity  of  the  administra- 
tion had  suffered  because  of  the  conduct  of  the  war.  The 
Republican  Congressional  Committee  scarcely  expected  to  elect 
a  majority  of  Republican  Representatives.  In  looking  the  situ- 
ation over,  it  was  decided  that  the  best  place  to  make  the  fight 
was  in  the  West.  The  war  was  popular  in  that  part  of  the  coun- 


THREE   YEARS   OF   TRANSITION  293 

try,  and  there  appeared  to  be  a  fair  chance  of  winning  back  some 
of  the  ground  which  had  been  lost  by  the  party  on  the  silver 
issue. 

Ordinarily  the  Chairman  of  the  National  Committee  does  not 
have  much  to  do  with  a  Congressional  campaign ;  but  in  the  fall 
of  1898  Mr.  Hanna  rendered  the  Congressional  Committee  effec- 
tive and  indispensable  assistance.  On  October  14  he  wrote  to 
Mr.  Thomas  H.  Carter,  who  had  preceded  him  as  Chairman  of 
the  National  Committee :  — 

"MY  DEAR  SENATOR:  — 

"I  have  just  returned  after  three  weeks'  absence  in  the  East, 
where  I  have  been  working  harder  than  I  ever  did  in  my  life  to 
secure  funds  for  the  Congressional  Committee,  without  which 
they  would  have  been  obliged  to  shut  up  shop.  I  milked  the 
country  and  turned  over  all  the  funds  to  Chairman  Babcock. 
I  don't  know  whether  I  can  get  any  more ;  but  I  can  try  and  I 
assure  you  it  will  give  me  pleasure  to  serve  you  in  any  way  I  can. 

"Sincerely  yours, 

"M.  A.  HANNA." 

He  did  succeed  in  raising  more  money,  which  was  spent  chiefly 
in  the  states  of  Kansas,  Nebraska,  Montana,  Idaho  and  Wyo- 
ming with  the  object,  not  only  of  obtaining  additional  Republi- 
can representation  in  the  Lower  House,  but  of  the  electing 
Legislatures  which  would  return  Republican  Senators. 

The  outcome  may  be  described  in  Mr.  Hanna's  own  words. 
After  the  election  a  meeting  of  mutual  congratulation  was  called 
by  the  Tippecanoe  Club  of  Cleveland.  On  this  occasion  Mr. 
Hanna  said:  "It  is  a  matter  of  great  congratulation  to  us  of 
Cleveland  that  the  election  resulted  in  a  vote  of  confidence  in 
the  administration  and  its  policy.  When  I  went  East  in  Septem- 
ber I  was  met  with  the  statement  that  we  would  lose  the  House. 
Chairman  Babcock  of  the  Congressional  Committee  told  me 
that  we  would  surely  lose  the  House  east  of  the  Mississippi 
River,  which  proved  to  be  true.  But  there  is  great  gratification 
in  noting  that  the  House  was  saved  by  the  states  west  of  the 
Missouri  River  —  the  very  states  where  the  free  silver  craze  had 
its  strongest  hold  on  the  people.  The  Republicans  of  those 
states,  who  had  wandered  after  strange  Gods,  returned  to  wor- 


294      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

ship  at  the  shrine  of  prosperity."  The  evidence  indicates  that 
it  was  the  war  rather  than  prosperity  which  had  brought  these 
Republicans  back  to  the  fold.  In  the  East  a  certain  reaction  in 
public  opinion  against  the  administration  was  noticeable.  Mr. 
^Theodore  Roosevelt,  who  in  the  eyes  of  the  country  was  the 
chief  military  hero  of  the  war,  was  elected  by  only  a  small  major- 
ity to  the  Governorship  of  New  York.  But  the  West,  which  had 
wanted  the  war  more  unanimously  than  had  the  East,  which 
had  an  instinctive  relish  for  the  excitements  and  the  hazards  of 
war,  and  which  was  Imperialist  hi  feeling  and  conviction,  rallied 
to  the  administration,  which,  however  unwillingly,  had  re- 
sponded to  the  call  of  military  patriotism.  The  war,  rather 
than  the  timid  beginnings  of  an  era  of  prosperity,  was  uppermost 
in  the  voters'  minds  during  the  fall  of  1898.  The  truth  of  this 
explanation  of  the  facts  is  confirmed  by  the  irresistible  demand, 
which  a  year  and  a  half  later  proceeded  from  the  Republicans  of 
the  West,  for  the  nomination  of  Theodore  Roosevelt  as  Vice- 
President. 

During  the  following  year  Mr.  Hanna's  leadership  of  the 
Republican  party  in  Ohio  received  still  more  emphatic  confirma- 
tion. Mayor  McKisson  was,  indeed,  renominated  by  the 
Cleveland  Republicans  after  a  bitter  fight  at  the  primaries,  but 
failed  of  reelection.  Not  for  ten  years  did  a  Republican  again 
become  Mayor  of  Cleveland.  Nevertheless,  although  Mr. 
Hanna  exercised  less  control  over  the  political  destiny  of  his  own 
city  than  he  had  a  decade  earlier,  he  continued  supreme  in  the 
state.  The  Convention  held  in  Columbus  on  June  1,,  1899, 
nominated  for  Governor  Mr.  George  K.  Nash,  one  of  Mr.  Hanna's 
close  associates.  The  nomination  was  the  outcome  of  an  under- 
standing between  Mr.  Hanna  and  Mr.  George  B.  Cox,  the  "  Boss  " 
of  Cincinnati.  A  letter  from  Mr.  Hanna  to  Mr.  Cox,  written 
about  a  week  before  the  date  of  the  Convention,  gives  some 
idea  of  the  relations  existing  at  that  time  between  the  two  men. 


DEAR  SIR:  — 

"I  am  in  receipt  of  yours  of  the  19th  inst.,  the  contents  of 
which  were  carefully  noted.  I  fully  sympathize  with  your  posi- 
tion that  we  should  be  guided  by  whatever  is  for  the  best  inter- 
ests of  the  party  in  our  action  at  the  State  Convention.  I  will 


THREE  YEARS  OF  TRANSITION  295 

be  glad  to  cooperate  with  you  to  that  end.  Of  course,  no  one  can 
tell  about  the  choice  of  candidates.  I  will  tell  you  frankly  that 
I  am  not  pledged  to  any  one,  but  I  am  opposed  to  Mr.  Daugh- 
erty  from  a  party  standpoint,  and  I  understand  that  we  agree  in 
that  position.  You  are  right  in  your  judgment  that  we  should 
not  meet  before  going  to  Columbus;  but  I  will  see  you  some 
time  during  the  night  before  the  first  day  of  the  Convention. 

"I  admire  your  good  sense  and  good  management  and  have 
faith  that  we  can  work  together. 

"  Sincerely  yours, 

"M.  A.  HANNA." 

The  campaign  that  followed  in  the  fall  of  1899  was  very  lively. 
Mr.  Hanna's  personal  prominence  and  his  relations  with  the 
administration  made  it  of  national  importance,  while  the  fact 
that  John  R.  McLean  was  the  Democratic  nominee  gave  the 
people  of  Ohio  a  chance  to  vote  on  an  echo  of  the  senatorial  fight 
of  January,  1898.  The  speakers  on  both  sides  discussed  national 
issues  exclusively.  Mr.  Hanna  put  in  a  large  part  of  October 
on  the  stump,  and  was  greeted  everywhere  with  favor  and  en- 
thusiasm by  large  crowds.  He  spoke  incidentally  on  the  issue 
of  Imperialism;  but  in  the  great  majority  of  his  speeches  he 
claimed  support  for  the  Republican  party,  because  of  the  fulfil- 
ment of  its  pledges.  By  the  fall  of  1899  prosperity  had  been 
undoubtedly  restored,  and  equally  without  doubt  the  revival  of 
business  enterprise  was  in  part  due  to  the  increasing  confidence 
of  business  men  hi  the  political  situation.  A  political  party  can 
very  rarely  claim  any  responsibility  for  the  course  of  business 
during  one  of  its  periods  of  domination ;  but  in  this  case  the 
Republicans  were  justified  in  crediting  themselves  and  their 
leaders  with  the  business  improvement.  The  Bryan  Democ- 
racy and  the  "Populistic"  agitation  hi  the  West  associated 
therewith  had  threatened  the  business  of  the  country  with  real 
dangers;  and  their  successful  opponents  had  contributed  both 
to  the  exorcism  of  the  free  silver  ghost  and  to  the  renewal  of 
general  confidence. 

The  speeches  of  Mr.  Hanna  delivered  in  the  fall  of  1899  give 
the  first  clear  and  well-rounded  expression  of  his  answer  to 
the  general  American  economic  problem.  The  situation  had 


296      MAKCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

changed  essentially  since  1897.  Not  only  had  prosperity  really 
come,  but  it  had  brought  with  it  unexpected  developments. 
The  latter  part  of  1898  and  1899  had  constituted  a  period  of 
unprecedented  industrial  reorganization.  Almost  every  morn- 
ing newspaper  was  filled  with  accounts  of  the  formation  of  new 
railroad  and  industrial  combinations.  The  relation  between 
this  process  of  business  consolidation  and  the  existing  Republi- 
can political  supremacy  was  unmistakable.  It  became  the 
subject  of  Democratic  attack  during  the  fall  of  1899,  and  Mr. 
Hanna  did  not  hesitate  or  fear  to  come  out  frankly  in  favor  of 
these  combinations.  He  approved  of  them  as  a  natural  busi- 
ness growth,  due  to  the  excesses  of  desperate  competition  which 
had  prevailed  during  the  business  depression.  He  regarded 
them,  furthermore,  as  necessary  instruments  for  the  develop- 
ment of  the  export  trade  of  the  country,  which  at  that  juncture 
was  becoming  unprecedentedly  large  in  manufactured  products. 
He  urged  upon  his  listeners  the  desirability  of  his  own  bill  sub- 
sidizing American  shipping  as  a  necessary  help  to  the  proper 
development  of  this  export  trade.  He  wanted  the  government 
to  take  this  further  step  in  promoting  industry,  in  order  that 
American  manufacturers  might  have  the  advantage  of  adequate 
means  of  transportation  in  making  their  assault  on  the  markets 
of  the  world. 

The  result  was  an  emphatic  indorsement  of  the  administra- 
tion. Mr.  George  K.  Nash  was  elected  by  a  plurality  of  about 
50,000  votes  over  McLean.  The  tide  had  evidently  turned  in 
the  East  as  well  as  in  the  West.  Similar  testimonials  were  ob- 
tained in  other  states,  and  undoubtedly  the  increasing  prosper- 
ity of  business  and  the  effect  thereof  upon  the  earnings  of  labor 
contributed  decisively  to  the  Republican  success.  The  renomi- 
nation  of  the  President,  who  had  fought  the  war  and  under 
whose  administration  prosperity  had  returned  was  assured, 
while  at  the  same  time  there  was  every  indication  that  Mr. 
Bryan  would  again  be  the  candidate  of  the  Democratic  party. 

Seldom  has  any  administration  after  three  years  in  office  com- 
manded such  united  support  from  its  party  as  in  the  beginning 
of  1900  did  the  administration  of  Mr.  McKinley.  Much  of  the 
credit  of  this  result  belongs  to  the  diplomacy  with  which  the 
President  handled  the  Republican  leaders  in  and  out  of  Congress. 


THREE   YEARS   OF  TRANSITION  297 

He  had  the  gift  of  refusing  requests  without  incurring  enmity, 
of  smoothing  over  disagreements,  of  conciliating  his  opponents, 
of  retaining  his  friends  without  necessarily  doing  too  much  for 
them,  of  overlooking  his  own  personal  grievances  and  of  steer- 
ing the  virtuous  middle  path  between  the  extremes  and  eccen- 
tricities of  party  opinion.  But  decisive  as  was  the  President's 
contribution  to  the  popularity  of  his  administration,  Mr.  Hanna 
also  deserves  a  certain  share  of  the  credit.  More  than  any  other 
single  man,  with  the  exception  of  the  President  himself,  Mr. 
Hanna  was  responsible  for  the  operation  of  that  most  vital  of 
party  functions,  the  distribution  of  patronage.  Under  his 
direction  and  that  of  the  President  the  appointments  to  office 
became,  as  it  rarely  had  been  in  the  past,  a  source  of  strength 
to  the  McKinley  administration. 

During  these  years  Mr.  Hanna  accomplished  in  an  exception- 
ally able  manner  the  work  of  reenforcing  and  consolidating  the 
existing  leadership  of  the  Republicans.  The  distribution  of 
patronage  necessarily  occasions  many  personal  disappointments 
and  grievances,  which  weaken  the  President  with  certain  in- 
dividuals and  factions  in  his  party.  Any  disposition  on  the  part 
of  the  President  or  his  responsible  advisers  to  play  favorites  or 
to  cherish  grudges,  any  tendency  to  misjudge  men  and  to  be 
deceived  by  plausible  misrepresentation,  any  failure  to  dis- 
tinguish properly  between  the  more  influential  and  the  less 
influential  factions,  has  a  damaging  effect  upon  party  harmony 
and  its  power  of  effective  cooperation.  To  name  only  recent 
examples  Mr.  Cleveland,  Mr.  Harrison  and  Mr.  Taft  have  all 
weakened  their  administrations  by  mistakes  in  selections  to 
office.  No  doubt  President  McKinley  and  Mr.  Hanna  made 
similar  mistakes  both  from  the  point  of  view  of  administrative 
efficiency  and  of  good  feeling  within  the  party,  but  on  the  whole 
they  certainly  exercised  the  President's  power  of  appointment 
with  unusual  success.  They  not  only  selected  for  the  higher 
offices  efficient  public  servants,  but  by  virtue  of  an  unusually 
clear  understanding  of  individuals  and  local  political  conditions, 
they  made  leading  Republicans  feel,  in  spite  of  certain  individ- 
ual grievances,  that  the  offices  were  being  distributed  for  the 
best  interests  of  the  whole  party. 

So  far  as  Mr.  Hanna  was  concerned,  this  success  was  due  to 


298      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS    LIFE    AND   WORK 

his  usual  ability  in  partially  systematizing  and  organizing  the 
distribution  of  offices,  while  at  the  same  time  giving  life  to  the 
system  by  tact  and  good  judgment  in  dealing  with  individuals 
and  with  exceptional  cases.  In  all  those  Northern  states  in 
which  the  Republicans  exercised  effective  power,  the  system  was 
already  established  and  required  merely  good  judgment  in  its 
application.  It  was  in  the  South  that  he  introduced  a  new  and 
what  he  believed  to  be  a  definite  system  of  making  Federal 
appointments.  The  local  offices  were  usually  filled  on  the  rec- 
ommendation of  the  defeated  congressional  candidate,  and 
Mr.  Hanna  expected  by  the  recognition  of  these  leaders  of  forlorn 
hopes  to  induce  a  better  quality  of  men  to  run  for  the  office. 
For  the  higher  Federal  offices,  such  as  the  United  States  Judges 
and  Attorneys,  the  recommendations  were  usually  accepted  of  a 
Board  of  Referees  —  consisting  of  the  defeated  candidate  for 
Governor,  the  chairman  of  the  State  Committee,  and  the  mem- 
ber of  the  National  Committee  from  that  state.  To  a  large 
extent  the  system  worked  automatically  all  over  the  Union,  but 
of  course  any  such  method  goes  to  pieces,  in  so  far  as  conflicting 
individual  or  factional  claims  are  intruded.  It  was  hi  dealing 
with  these  exceptional  cases  that  Mr.  McKinley's  tact  was  useful 
as  well  as  Mr.  Hanna's  gift  of  understanding  other  men,  of 
getting  their  confidence  and  of  bending  or  persuading  them  to 
his  will. 

In  all  these  matters  Mr.  Hanna's  disposition  to  live  and  let 
live,  his  instinct  for  dealing  candidly  and  fairly  with  the  other 
man,  was  as  much  of  a  help  to  him  in  politics  as  it  had  been  in 
business.  When  he  could  not  do  what  was  asked  of  him,  he  did 
not  hesitate  or  equivocate.  He  told  plainly  why  he  must  refuse, 
and  as  his  reasons  were  usually  convincing,  the  applicant  rarely 
departed  with  a  grievance.  Moreover,  his  decisions  and  recom- 
mendations were  really  dictated  by  the  welfare  of  the  party  and 
not  by  personal  interest  or  favoritism.  He  did,  indeed,  pursue 
relentlessly  the  Ohio  Republicans,  who  had  entered  the  con- 
spiracy against  his  election  to  the  Senate,  and  he  rewarded 
almost  all  of  his  prominent  supporters.  But  the  testimony  is 
unanimous  that  in  other  respects  his  recommendations  for  office 
were  both  disinterested  and  wise.  He  never  presumed  upon  his 
own  power  either  with  the  President,  the  heads  of  departments 


THREE    YEARS    OF   TRANSITION  299 

or  with  his  colleagues.  His  influence  was  based  largely  upon  his 
instinctive  sense  of  its  own  necessary  limits.  If  he  had  really 
been  or  tried  to  be  an  autocrat  beyond  the  limits  within  which 
autocratic  management  was  permissible  under  the  official  and 
unofficial  rules,  his  influence  would  soon  have  withered  away. 

Certain  of  Mr.  Hanna's  political  methods  have  frequently 
been  misinterpreted.  The  facts  that  he  was  indifferent  to  the 
Civil  Service  law  and  believed  in  rewarding  party  workers  with 
government  offices,  have  created  an  impression  that  he  was  also 
indifferent  to  efficiency  in  public  departmental  work.  Such  was 
far  from  being  the  case.  He  wanted  to  put  good  men  in  all  im- 
portant offices.  Once  they  were  installed,  he  was  careful  to 
leave  them  alone.  Many  different  officials,  who  directly  or 
indirectly  owed  their  appointment  to  Mr.  Hanna,  have  asserted 
emphatically  that  he  never  bothered  them  with  recommenda- 
tions about  their  assistants  or  about  the  conduct  of  their  offices. 
Pressure  was  continually  being  brought  to  bear  upon  him  to 
obtain  favors  for  various  people  from  the  heads  of  executive 
departments  hi  Washington.  He  would  sometimes  write  letters, 
stating  the  request  and  adding  that  he  would  be  glad  to  see  it 
granted.  But  in  such  cases  he  would  almost  always  add  a  post- 
script in  his  own  handwriting,  advising  his  correspondent  that 
if  his  request  was  in  any  way  injurious  to  departmental  disci- 
pline or  efficiency,  it  should  be  ignored  —  as  indeed  they  often 
were.  As  another  illustration  to  the  same  effect  I  have  before 
me  a  copy  of  a  letter  to  Mr.  Frank  M.  Chandler  in  which  he  was 
advising  the  latter  about  the  nomination  of  certain  judges  for 
the  Court  of  Common  Pleas  in  Cuyahoga  County:  "Pick  good 
men  above  all  other  considerations,"  he  wrote,  and  emphasized 
the  sentence  with  an  underline.  "I  would  rather  take  our 
chances  with  good  candidates,  and  if  defeated,  be  defeated  with 
good  men."  Many  other  letters  to  similar  effect  could  be 
quoted. 

He  objected  to  Civil  Service  reform  as  much  from  the  point 
of  view  of  a  business  man  as  from  that  of  a  politician.  He  knew 
that  any  private  business  would  be  ruined  which  tended  to  make 
subordinates  independent  of  their  chiefs.  When  he  named  a 
man  for  a  responsible  office,  he  always  allowed  the  appointee  to 
select  his  own  assistants.  After  Mr.  Charles  F.  Leach  had  been 


300      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

made  Collector  of  Customs  in  Cleveland,  he  went  to  Mr.  Hanna's 
office  and  showed  the  Senator  a  long  list  of  good  Republicans 
who  had  applied  for  places.  Mr.  Hanna  refused  to  interfere. 
He  mentioned  certain  names  and  said  that  he  would  be  glad  to 
have  them  considered,  but  he  told  Mr.  Leach  to  use  his  own 
judgment.  "You  will  be  responsible  for  the  conduct  of  your 
office  and  must  select  your  own  subordinates."  When  Mr. 
Frank  M.  Chandler  was  appointed  United  States  marshal  in 
Cleveland  he  was  advised  by  the  Department  of  Justice  to  be 
very  careful  in  his  selection  of  deputies,  and  what  followed  can 
best  be  told  in  his  own  words :  "I  talked  matters  over  with  Mr. 
Hanna,  who  was  in  Washington,  and  he  told  me  to  be  careful 
about  my  selections,  but  he  mentioned  certain  men  whom  he 
would  have  liked  taken  care  of,  if  possible.  I  did  as  he  sug- 
gested, and  found  that  the  men  named  did  not  meet  the  standard 
which  I  wished  to  maintain.  I  laid  the  result  of  my  investiga- 
tions before  Mr.  Hanna,  and  he  said :  '  That  doesn't  look  as  if 
you  wanted  my  men.  You  must  be  responsible  for  the  conduct 
of  your  office.  Go  ahead  and  select  whom  you  want.  Get  good 
men  on  whom  you  can  rely/"  Mr.  Charles  C.  Dewstoe,  who 
had  been  appointed  Postmaster  of  Cleveland  on  the  recommen- 
dation of  Congressman  Burton,  but  who  consulted  Mr.  Hanna 
about  his  subordinates,  supplies  testimony  to  a  similar  effect. 

It  would  be  of  course  absurd  to  claim  that  Mr.  Hanna  did  not 
frequently  have  incompetent  party  workers  appointed  to  office. 
He  was  a  practical  politician,  who  worked  with  the  machine. 
He  looked  askance  at  any  attempt  to  reform  prevailing  political 
methods,  which  might  temporarily  interfere  with  partisan  har- 
mony and  efficiency.  He  cooperated  with  some  of  the  worst 
elements  in  his  party  as  well  as  with  the  best.  He  conceived  it 
as  his  business  above  all  to  keep  the  Republicans  united,  so  that 
they  could  march  to  victory  under  his  leadership.  They  could 
be  kept  united  only  in  case  the  existing  local  organizations  were 
accepted  and  possible  corruption  overlooked.  Reformers  who 
were  opposed  to  the  local  machines,  and  were  thereby  endangering 
local  Republican  ascendency,  obtained  no  sympathy  from  him. 
But  although  he  worked  exclusively  with  the  machine  and  used 
government  offices  to  pay  personal  and  partisan  political  debts, 
he  was  far  from  indifferent  to  the  desirability  of  appointing  to 


THREE    YEARS    OF   TRANSITION  301 

office  able  and  upright  men.  The  dislike  which  Civil  Service 
reformers  entertain  for  the  business  of  distributing  the  spoils 
of  office  for  the  purpose  of  rewarding  party  politicians  have 
tended  to  make  them  class  all  spoilsmen  together  and  to  visit  on 
them  all  a  joint  condemnation.  But  the  task  of  distributing 
patronage  has  a  very  human  side  to  it  and  involves  rules  and 
values  of  its  own.  Mark  Hanna  accepted  the  system;  he  be- 
lieved in  it  under  existing  political  conditions ;  he  even  developed 
it.  He  and  Mr.  McKinley  between  them  actually  made  it  a 
source  of  strength  rather  than  a  source  of  weakness  to  the  ad- 
ministration and  to  the  party.  But  if  they  did  so  that  was 
because  in  some  measure  they  dignified  it.  They  put  a  large 
measure  of  fair  play  and  an  honest  demand  for  efficient  service 
into  a  system  of  public  appointment  that  offers  strong  tempta- 
tions and  opportunities  for  mere  favoritism,  for  prejudice,  for 
misjudgment  and  for  abuses  and  perversions  of  all  kinds. 


CHAPTER  XX 

THE   CONVENTION   OF   1900 

No  National  Convention  of  either  party  ever  assembled  under 
fairer  auspices  than  the  Republican  Convention  of  1900.  There 
was  little  disagreement  or  misgiving  within  the  party  as  to  the 
candidate  who  was  to  head  the  ticket  or  as  to  the  platform  on 
which  he  was  to  stand.  The  unanimity  with  which  President 
McKinley  was  renominated  was  a  fair  expression  of  a  substan- 
tially unanimous  sentiment  in  his  favor  among  Republicans  of 
all  classes  and  all  sections.  The  only  suggestion  of  discontent 
against  the  official  leadership  came  from  the  Republican  machine 
of  Pennsylvania,  headed  by  Matthew  Quay;  and  everybody 
knew  that  the  causes  of  this  discontent  were  personal.  Even 
personal  grievances  were,  however,  the  rare  exception.  Few 
Presidents  at  the  end  of  their  first  term  have  ever  received  a 
more  general  and  hearty  indorsement  from  his  partisan  asso- 
ciates than  did  William  McKinley. 

The  indorsement  of  Mr.  McKinley  included  the  indorsement 
of  his  political  prime  minister  —  Mark  Hanna.  The  party,  as 
a  whole,  was  as  well  satisfied  with  his  share  of  the  leadership  as 
they  were  with  the  President's.  In  some  parts  of  the  country 
he  was,  of  course,  more  popular  than  in  others.  Certain  of  the 
states  of  New  England,  for  instance,  were  no  more  than  luke- 
warm. Their  leaders  wx>uld  not  have  been  sorry  to  embarrass  the 
administration  and  Mr.  Hanna,  but  they  were  powerless.  Mr. 
Hanna  had  the  Middle  West  solidly  behind,  and  he  had  the 
organization,  almost  all  over  the  country,  enthusiastically  in 
his  favor.  The  personal  leadership  which  he  had  been  quietly 
reenforcing  and  consolidating  during  the  intervening  years  was, 
when  the  Convention  met,  suddenly  made  conspicuous  and 
manifest.  He  did  not  control  the  Convention.  In  one  impor- 
tant respect,  it  proved,  like  the  Convention  of  1896,  to  have 
a  will  of  its  own.  But  he  was  by  far  the  most  influential  Re- 

302 


THE    CONVENTION   OF   1900  303 

publican  among  those  who  gathered  in  Philadelphia  and  in  all 
but  one  matter  his  will  was  dominant.  Immediately  after 
the  Convention  he  disclosed  to  a  friend  in  a  confidential  mo- 
ment that  he  would  not  exchange  the  personal  power  which  he 
was  able  to  exert  with  that  of  the  President. 

Throughout  the  fall  of  1899  and  the  winter  of  1900  he  labored 
hard  and  successfully  to  establish  the  dominant  issue  for  the 
coming  election.  He  wanted  above  all  the  campaign  of  1900 
to  be  the  continuation  and  consummation  of  the  campaign  of 
1896.  The  fundamental  fact  was  that  the  Republicans  had  been 
placed  in  power  in  order  to  accomplish  certain  results ;  and  they 
had  been  as  good  as  their  promises.  They  had  established  the 
gold  standard ;  they  had  restored  the  confidence  of  business  men 
in  the  American  financial  system ;  they  had  disproved  the  claims 
of  Mr.  Bryan  that  the  single  gold  standard  meant  economic 
privation  and  disaster;  and  they  had  bestowed  comparative 
prosperity  on  the  business  man  and  on  the  wage-earner.  Al- 
though the  party  in  power,  they  could  afford  to  take  high 
ground.  They  were  not  on  the  defensive.  If  any  administra- 
tion and  party  ever  had  a  right  to  claim  a  continuation  of  public 
confidence,  because  of  a  sequence  between  promise  and  perform- 
ance, the  first  McKinley  administration  and  the  President's 
party  were  most  assuredly  in  that  position. 

Mr.  Harma  in  his  speech  before  the  Ohio  State  Convention  on 
April  24,  1900,  attempted  to  strike  the  proper  keynote  of  the 
campaign.  "  I  say  the  spirit  of  the  hour  should  be  one  of  abso- 
lute fearlessness  on  the  part  of  the  Republicans.  We  are  con- 
scious, as  your  chairman  has  said,  of  having  fulfilled  every 
promise  made.  We  took  this  country  into  our  hands  and  under 
our  care  after  four  years  of  unprecedented  vicissitudes  hi  busi- 
ness. At  our  Convention  in  St.  Louis  we  proclaimed  the  doc- 
trine and  policy  of  the  Republican  party,  upon  which  for  twenty 
years  had  been  built  the  material  interests  of  the  country.  We 
promised  such  reforms  and  such  economic  legislation  as  would 
produce  a  return  of  these  benefits.  We  even  said  that  we 
would  go  beyond  the  ideas  of  our  fathers  hi  the  benefits  which 
would  flow  from  the  perpetuation  of  our  policy.  We  now  stand 
on  what  we  have  achieved  and  accomplished  in  respect  to  the 
material  interests  of  this  country.  Looking  in  the  face  of  such 


304      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

results,  I  repeat  your  chairman's  words:  'Do  we  want  a 
change  ? ' "  Such  was  the  stock  Republican  campaign  argument, 
which  was  repeated  during  the  next  six  months  from  every  plat- 
form, and  which  was  finally  summed  up  by  Mr.  Hanna  in  the 
phrase  "Let  well  enough  alone." 

The  wicked  Democrats,  however,  repudiated  the  statement 
that  any  such  simple  and  definite  issue  divided  the  parties. 
They  proposed  to  divert  the  minds  of  the  voters  from  the  suc- 
cess of  Republican  policy  and  from  the  substantial  benefits  of 
Republican  control  by  raising  various  additional  questions.  As 
Mr.  Hanna  said  in  the  speech  from  which  I  have  already  quoted  : 
"The  Republicans  of  the  United  States  are  confronted  to-day 
with  many  new  propositions  and  issues  thrown  around  us  like 
tangled  grass  hi  our  pathway  by  the  Democratic  party"  :  and 
it  was  difficult  to  judge  in  advance  whether  any  of  these  issues 
would  actually  serve  to  distract  public  attention  from  the  smok- 
ing factory  chimneys  and  the  full  dinner-pail. 

When  the  Republican  Convention  assembled  in  June,  the 
Democratic  Convention  was  two  weeks  away,  but  its  candidate 
and  doctrine  could  be  accurately  predicted.  William  J.  Bryan 
was  to  be  the  candidate  and  he  was  to  be  supported  by  a  com- 
bination of  the  old  Democracy  and  trans-Mississippi  Populism. 
The  platform  was  to  reaffirm  the  silver  heresy  of  1896,  because 
Mr.  Bryan  would  not  repudiate  a  doctrine  which  he  had  urged 
upon  the  American  people  with  so  much  eloquence  and  confi- 
dence ;  but  not  very  much  homage  was  to  be  paid  to  it  during 
the  campaign.  The  Republicans  were  to  be  denounced,  partly 
because  they  had  committed  the  country  to  a  perilous  and  un- 
democratic Imperialistic  adventure  in  the  Philippines,  and 
because  they  had  been  recreant  to  the  "plain  duty"  of  the  na- 
tional government  towards  Puerto  Rico.  But  most  of  all  they 
were  held  up  to  execration  because  during  their  four  years  of 
office  the  process  of  industrial  combination  had  made  enormous 
strides,  and  because  the  Republicans  had  delivered  the  Ameri- 
can people  bound  hand  and  foot  into  the  power  of  the  big  cor- 
porations. 

The  administration  did  not  and  could  not  avoid  the  issue 
raised  by  the  acquisition  of  the  Philippines  and  the  bloody  sup- 
pression of  the  Philippine  rebellion ;  but  Mr.  McKmley  did  not 


THE    CONVENTION   OF   1900  305 

want  too  much  emphasis  placed  upon  it.  Both  the  Cuban  War 
and  its  consequences  had  been  forced  upon  him.  He  had  finally 
insisted  upon  the  cession  of  the  Philippines  by  Spain,  not  be- 
cause he  welcomed  the  assumption  by  the  national  government 
of  such  responsibilities,  but  because  the  alternative  looked  still 
more  dubious.  By  a  refusal  he  would  have  alienated  that  part 
of  the  country  which  contributed  most  of  his  personal  following, 
while  at  the  same  time  he  would  not  have  avoided  a  certain  re- 
sponsibility towards  the  Philippines,  created  by  the  military 
situation  hi  those  islands.  He  would  have  liked  to  keep  the 
country  and  his  administration  free  from  any  such  entangle- 
ments, both  because  they  squared  ill  with  his  inherited  phrases 
and  because  they  prevented  the  country  from  concentrating 
its  attention  on  the  great  drama  of  prosperity,  of  which  he  was 
the  advance  agent.  Consequently,  while  ably  and  vigorously 
defended  a  policy  of  expansion,  it  was  more  or  less  a  source  of 
embarrassment  to  him.  There  was  a  real  danger  that  public 
opinion  might  be  shocked  and  alienated  by  the  necessarily  bloody 
suppression  of  Philippine  insurrection.  In  all  these  respects 
Mr.  Hanna  agreed  with  his  chief.  He  was  enough  of  a  realist 
in  politics  not  to  have  any  scruples  against  a  policy  of  extra- 
territorial expansion,  but  was  not  interested  in  it,  and  he  re- 
garded its  intrusion  into  the  campaign  as  a  mere  befogging  of 
the  essential  issue. 

The  " trust"  issue,  on  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Hanna  welcomed 
rather  than  feared.  More  than  any  other  American  political 
leader  of  equal  prominence,  he  was  not  afraid  to  identify  him- 
self openly  with  the  cause  of  corporate  aggrandizement.  His 
public  attitude  towards  the  matter  was  modified  somewhat  by 
Mr.  McKinley's  consistent  desire  to  keep  in  the  middle  of  the 
road.  He  always  declared  his  opposition  to  the  " trusts,"  hi  so 
far  as  they  endeavored  to  create  a  monoply  and  absolutely  con- 
trol prices.  But  his  sympathies  were  on  the  side  of  organized 
capital.  He  knew  that  the  enormous  impulse,  which  the  process 
of  railroad  and  industrial  consolidation  had  received  since  1898, 
had  been  caused  by  a  desire  to  escape  from  certain  critical  evils 
resulting  from  unrestrained  competition ;  and  he  knew  that  the 
organization  of  larger  corporate  units  resulted  hi  many  real  and 
desirable  economies  in  the  transaction  of  business.  Any  forcible 


306      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

interference  with  the  process  might  have  injurious  effects  on  in- 
dustrial and  economical  activity.  The  revival  of  prosperity  was 
associated  with  the  reorganization  of  business  methods,  and  Mr. 
Hanna  believed  so  devoutly  in  the  former  that  he  was  not  dis- 
posed to  question  the  latter. 

In  holding  this  belief  Mr.  Hanna  was  fairly  representative  of 
the  dominant  trend  of  public  opinion.  There  were,  .indeed, 
plain  indications  that  certain  elements  in  public  opinion,  not 
ordinarily  inclined  to  sectionalism  or  radicalism,  were  becoming 
uneasy  at  the  spectacle  of  unchecked  corporate  aggrandizement. 
But  their  uneasiness  had  not  become  lively  and  aggressive. 
Radical  opposition  to  the  large  corporations  was  still  confined 
chiefly  to  Western  Democrats  and  Populists,  and  their  opposi- 
tion alienated  public  opinion,  because  it  was  associated  with  so 
many  economic  and  financial  heresies,  and  because  it  was  so 
plainly  biassed  by  sectional  interests  and  objects.  In  spite  of 
certain  misgivings  the  ordinary  patriotic  American  was  inclined 
to  accept  the  process  of  consolidation  as  inevitable  and  desirable 
and  to  associate  the  enemies  of  the  " trusts"  with  the  enemies 
of  prosperity.  At  that  particular  juncture  the  majority  of 
American  voters,  whether  farmers,  business  men  or  wage- 
earners,  were,  after  their  many  years  of  famine,  prosperity-mad. 

The  "trust"  issue,  consequently,  did  not  cause  very  much 
alarm  at  the  headquarters  of  the  Republican  national  committee. 
Mr.  Hanna  knew  that  it  would  be  flourished  valiantly  all  over 
the  country,  but  he  felt  that  the  criticism  would  be  discounted, 
because  of  the  source  from  which  it  came.  The  "trust"  plank 
in  the  platform  of  1900  was  written  by  Mr.  Hanna  himself  after 
consultation  with  the  President.  A  draft  of  it  exists  in  Mr. 
Hanna's  own  handwriting,  and  it  is  reproduced  hi  facsimile,  in 
order  both  to  give  an  example  of  Mr.  Hanna's  handwriting  and 
to  call  attention  to  the  emendations  hi  the  draft.  The  word 
"honest"  is  added  before  "aggregations  of  capital,"  possibly 
at  the  suggestion  of  the  prudent  President,  and  as  originally 
written  the  plank  declared  such  "aggregations"  to  be  necessary 
only  to  the  development  of  foreign  trade.  The  change  is  of 
importance  chiefly  as  indicating  the  way  in  which  Mr.  Hanna 
instinctively  regarded  the  relation  of  the  "trusts"  to  American 
business.  In  1900  exports  of  manufactures  were  increasing  by 


THE   CONVENTION   OF   1900 


307 


leaps  and  bounds,  particularly  in  the  highly  organized  indus- 
tries. The  large  industrial  unit  was  considered  to  be  a  more 
effective  agent  in  the  difficult  work  of  creating  foreign  markets 
than  the  smaller  one.  This  aspect  of  the  matter  always  bulked 
large  in  his  mind  and  was  closely  associated,  as  we  shall  see,  with 
his  determined  advocacy  of  ship  subsidies.  It  need  only  be 
added  that  the  plank,  as  reproduced  herewith,  was  accepted  by 
the  Committee  on  Resolutions  of  the  Convention  practically 
intact.  The  word  "legitimacy"  became  "propriety,"  and  the 
first  sentence  was  made  coordinate  with  the  second  instead  of 
dependent  upon  it. 


Facsinule  of  the  "  Trust "  Blank  in  the  Republican  Platform  of  1900  in  Mr.  Hanna's 

Handwriting. 


308      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

With  its  leading  candidates  and  its  platform  practically  dic- 
tated, the  Convention  of  1900  might  have  been  expected  to  be 
too  harmonious  for  anything  but  words.  The  only  task  which 
circumstances  had  left  to  the  discretion  of  the  delegates  was  the 
nomination  for  Vice-President ;  and  American  parties  and  par- 
tisan conventions  have  usually  refused  to  get  interested  in  the 
candidate  for  that  contingently  important  office.  After  the 
question  of  the  Presidential  candidate  is  settled,  the  delegates 
are  so  anxious  to  go  home  that  they  allow  a  Vice-Presidential 
candidate  to  be  imposed  upon  them  by  the  head  of  the  ticket. 
The  more  conspicuous  and  able  party  leaders  do  not  want  the 
office,  which  has  a  way  of  ending  the  political  career  of  the  man 
who  wins  it.  The  successful  candidate  is  usually  some  subordi- 
nate leader  who  is  supposed  to  be  able  to  carry  an  important 
state,  remote  from  the  residence  of  the  Presidential  candidate. 

In  1900,  however,  this  ordinarily  neglected  task  was  the  only 
aspect  of  the  Convention's  work  hi  which  the  delegates  had  a 
chance  to  get  interested.  They  seized  it  with  avidity,  and  soon 
became  almost  as  much  excited  over  their  choice  for  the  minor 
as  they  usually  were  for  the  major  office.  The  influence  of  the 
administration  was  not  being  exerted  in  favor  of  any  candidate. 
Both  Mr.  McKinley  and  Mr.  Hanna  had  their  preferences,  but 
their  favorite  candidates  spurned  the  office.  Mr.  McKinley's 
choice,  Senator  Allison,  was  satisfied  with  his  seat  and  his  posi- 
tion in  the  Senate.  Mr.  Hanna's  choice,  Mr.  Cornelius  N.  Bliss, 
to  which  the  President  would  have  cordially  assented,  refused 
to  permit  the  use  of  his  name.  Mr.  Bliss  had  been  for  about  a 
year  and  a  half  Secretary  of  Interior  in  Mr.  McKinley's  Cabinet. 
During  the  period  of  their  joint  official  service  in  Washington, 
the  warm  friendship  between  him  and  Mr.  Hanna,  which  had 
started  during  the  campaign  of  '96,  became  still  more  affection- 
ately intimate.  They  lived  together  for  a  while  during  the 
summer  of  '98,  and  both  used  subsequently  to  refer  to  these 
months  as  peculiarly  pleasant — in  spite  of  the  trying  nature  of 
their  official  duties.  It  was  natural,  consequently,  that  after 
Mr.  Hobart's  death,  Mr.  Hanna  should  have  wished  to  put 
Mr.  Bliss  in  his  place. 

If  Mr.  Bliss  had  consented  to  allow  the  use  of  his  name,  Mr. 
Hanna  would  have  planned  his  nomination  months  in  advance, 


THE   CONVENTION   OF    1900  309 

and  might  well  have  succeeded.  The  latter  never  had  any 
doubt  about  his  ability  to  bring  about  the  nomination  of  any 
really  available  candidate.  But  Mr.  Bliss  refused.  Even  after 
the  Convention  had  assembled,  Mr.  Hanna  continued  to  urge 
Mr.  Bliss,  who  was  a  delegate  from  New  York,  to  consent.  For 
a  moment  there  was  some  hesitation.  Mr.  Bliss  was  so  far  per- 
suaded that  he  even  yielded  —  provided  Mr.  Hanna  would  dis- 
arm the  opposition  of  Mrs.  Bliss.  But  Mr.  Hanna  threw  up  his 
hands  at  the  proviso.  He  had  already  incurred  Mrs.  Bliss's 
disfavor  by  persuading  her  husband  to  accept  a  Cabinet  office, 
and  he  declined  to  travel  any  farther  along  that  road. 

With  Senator  Allison  and  Mr.  Bliss  eliminated  there  was  no 
candidate  whom  either  the  President  or  Mr.  Hanna  very  much 
preferred.  The  other  men  frequently  mentioned  for  the  place 
were  Governor  Roosevelt,  Jonathan  Dolliver,  then  a  Congress- 
man from  Iowa,  ex-Secretary  of  the  Navy,  John  D.  Long,  Charles 
M.  Fairbanks  of  Indiana  and  Timothy  Woodruff,  a  New 
York  politician.  Mr.  Roosevelt,  who  was  much  the  most  promi- 
nent of  these  candidates,  was  being  proposed  for  the  office  very 
much  against  his  own  will,  while  at  the  other  end  of  the  scale 
was  Mr.  Woodruff,  who  was  enthusiastically  in  favor  of  his  own 
selection. 

Mr.  Roosevelt's  candidacy  was  being  assiduously  promoted 
by  Senator  Thomas  C.  Platt,  the  "Boss"  of  New  York.  The 
Governor  during  his  term  of  office  had  exhibited  a  good  deal  of 
undesirable  independence  in  respect  both  to  the  legislation 
which  he  favored  and  to  his  appointments.  He  had  come  into 
sharp  collision  with  Senator  Platt  and  the  New  York  Republican 
machine  over  several  matters,  particularly  the  question  of  the 
handling  of  the  insurance  department  and  the  Franchise  Tax 
Bill.  He  achieved  his  object  hi  having  the  bill  passed  in  proper 
shape,  but  only  at  the  cost  of  serious  trouble  with  the  organiza- 
tion. After  its  passage  Mr.  Roosevelt  soon  found  that  the 
regular  leaders  were  more  or  less  covertly  hostile  to  him  and 
were  anxious  to  prevent  his  renomination.  They  feared  he 
might  succeed,  in  spite  of  their  opposition,  and  they  hit  upon  the 
plan  of  getting  rid  of  him  by  bringing  about  his  nomination  for 
Vice-President.  Before  the  Convention  assembled,  Mr.  Roose- 
velt had  no  idea  that  the  Vice-Presidential  candidacy  was  any- 


310      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

thing  but  a  device  contrived  by  Senator  Platt  and  the  machine 
to  end  his  career  as  Governor,  and  announced  that  he  would  not 
accept  the  nomination.  He  went  to  the  Convention  primarily 
for  the  purpose  of  preventing  it. 

Both  Mr.  McKinley  and  Mr.  Hanna  were  as  much  opposed 
to  Mr.  Roosevelt's  candidacy  as  was  the  candidate  himself. 
When  the  latter  arrived  in  Philadelphia,  he  had  no  definite  plans, 
except  to  nominate  Mr.  Bliss  (if  possible),  and  to  prevent  the 
nomination  of  Mr.  Roosevelt.  The  Colonel  of  Rough  Riders, 
after  his  return  from  Cuba,  had  been  free  in  his  private  criticism 
of  the  conduct  of  the  war,  and  his  whole  attitude  towards  the 
war  had  been  different  from  that  of  the  administration.  Al- 
though he  had  always  behaved  as  a  loyal  Republican,  he  was 
regarded  as  erratic  and  "  unsafe," — as,  indeed,  he  undoubtedly 
was  from  the  point  of  view  of  an  administration  of  the  affairs 
of  the  country  chiefly  in  the  interest  of  business.  The  Vice- 
Presidency  might  have  seemed  to  be  one  of  the  safest  offices  in 
the  government  in  which  to  confine  an  unsafe  political  leader; 
but  Mr.  Hanna  had  gone  to  Philadelphia  with  the  intention  of 
engineering  the  nomination  of  a  Vice-Presidential  candidate  who 
would  make  from  his  point  of  view  a  thoroughly  good  President. 
It  was  characteristic  of  him  to  provide,  if  possible,  in  advance 
against  the  inconvenient  contingency  of  having  his  Harrison 
succeeded  by  a  Tyler. 

There  is  a  story  to  the  effect  that  when  Mr.  Timothy  Wood- 
ruff was  urging  upon  Mr.  Hanna  his  personal  advantages  as  a 
Vice-Presidential  candidate,  the  latter  asked  him :  — 

"Do  you  think  that  the  Convention  would  nominate  you  for 
the  Presidency?"  Mr.  Woodruff  allowed  that  the  Convention 
would  not.  "Then,"  said  Mr.  Hanna,  "don't  you  know  that 
there  is  only  one  life  between  the  Presidency  and  the  Vice-Presi- 
dency and  that  it  would  be  foolhardy  to  nominate  a  man  for 
Vice-President  who  would  not  be  big  enough  to  be  President?" 
What  Mr.  Woodruff  replied,  the  chronicle  sayeth  not;  but  he 
might  have  retorted  that  the  nomination  of  politicians  for  the 
Vice-Presidency  who  were  not  fit  to  be  President  was  one  of  the 
most  ancient  and  best  established  of  American  political  tradi- 
tions, and  that  from  any  such  point  of  view  his  qualifications 
were  unimpeachable.  He  might  have  urged,  also,  that  his  own  re- 


THE   CONVENTION   OF   1900  311 

moval  to  Washington,  unlike  that  of  Mr.  Roosevelt,  would  have 
been  a  benefit  to  the  cause  of  good  government  in  New  York. 

Although  Mr.  Hanna  was  emphatically  opposed  to  Mr. 
Roosevelt's  nomination,  neither  he  nor,  of  course,  the  President 
had  given  any  public  expression  to  his  opposition.  Nor  had  he 
taken  any  precautions  to  prevent  it.  He  did  not  think  such 
precautions  necessary.  Inasmuch  as  Mr.  Roosevelt  himself 
did  not  want  it,  and  as  the  New  York  delegation  was  divided 
between  Mr.  Woodruff  and  the  Governor,  the  prospects  of  such 
a  nomination  did  not  look  serious.  Mr.  Roosevelt  arrived  in 
Philadelphia  on  Saturday,  June  16,  and  in  an  interview  shortly 
thereafter  with  Mr.  Hanna,  he  repudiated  so  decisively  the  idea 
of  becoming  a  candidate  that  Mr.  Hanna  gave  out  a  statement 
in  reference  to  the  matter.  He  declared  himself  opposed  to 
Mr.  Roosevelt's  nomination  on  the  ground  that  the  candidacy 
should  not  be  forced  on  any  man.  He  undoubtedly  expected 
that  this  declaration  would  settle  this  matter.  The  Conven- 
tion had  shown  no  disposition  to  question  his  leadership,  and 
preferences  for  Vice-Presidential  candidates  never  had  much 
vitality.  With  Mr.  Roosevelt  out  of  the  way  the  nomination 
seemed  to  lie  between  Jonathan  Dolliver  and  John  D.  Long, 
with  the  chances  in  the  former's  favor. 

What  followed  can  best  be  narrated  in  Mr.  Roosevelt's  own 
words :  — 

"  Immediately  on  reaching  Philadelphia,  I  was  made  aware 
that  there  was  a  very  strong  movement  outside  of  the  State  of 
New  York  in  favor  of  my  nomination,  the  motive  of  these  men 
outside  of  New  York  being  the  exact  reverse  of  the  motives  of 
the  politicians  from  New  York ;  for  the  men  outside  New  York 
wished  me  nominated  because  they  believed  in  me  and  wished  me 
to  continue  in  public  life.  However,  it  was  some  little  time 
before  I  attached  full  weight  to  this  outside  movement,  my 
attention  being  absorbed  by  the  effort  within  the  New  York 
delegation  to  force  me  as  a  candidate.  Senator  Platt  had  come 
on,  and  personally  and  through  his  lieutenants  was  assuming 
control  of  the  delegation,  and  they  were  insisting  that  I  would 
have  to  be  nominated,  and  that  New  York  would  insist  upon 
presenting  my  name.  I  insisted  that  I  would  not  be  nominated, 
and  that  I  would  not  permit  New  York  to  present  my  name. 


312      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

Finally  a  caucus  of  the  New  York  delegates  was  called,  and  it 
was  while  this  caucus  was  being  held  that  I  had  my  interview 
with  Senator  Platt.  As  soon  as  the  caucus  came  together  it 
became  evident  that  a  concerted  effort  would  be  made  to  force 
me  into  the  acceptance  of  the  nomination,  without  regard  to  my 
wishes.  I  taxed  the  leaders  of  the  movement  with  desiring 
merely  to  get  me  out  of  the  Governorship  —  for  my  term  as  Gov- 
ernor would  end  the  following  January,  and  the  Convention  to 
nominate  a  Governor  would  be  held  some  three  months  after  the 
Presidential  Convention  which  we  were  then  attending.  Some 
of  those  I  thus  taxed  with  wishing  to  eliminate  me  from  the 
Governorship  acknowledged  the  fact  with  a  laugh;  others 
denied  it.  I  told  them  that  I  would  not  permit  them  to  nomi- 
nate me  for  Vice-President,  that  I  would  not  only  make  the 
fight  in  the  caucus,  but  also  if  necessary  in  the  Convention,  and 
explain  fully  what  I  believed  their  purpose  was ;  and  that  most 
assuredly  after  such  public  explanation  by  me,  it  would  be 
impossible  for  them  to  nominate  me. 

"This  caused  a  good  deal  of  commotion,  and  in  a  short  while 
one  of  Mr.  Platt's  lieutenants  came  to  me  and  stated  that  the 
Senator  wished  to  see  me  in  his  room,  to  which  he  was  confined 
because  of  an  accident  with  which  he  had  met.  I  accordingly 
went  upstairs  and  saw  him.  He  told  me  that  it  had  been  de- 
cided that  I  was  to  be  nominated  for  Vice-President,  and  that 
they  could  not  accept  any  refusal,  and  that  I  would  have  to 
yield.  I  answered  that  I  was  sorry  to  be  disagreeable,  but  that 
I  regarded  the  movement  as  one  to  get  me  out  of  the  Governorship 
for  reasons  which  were  not  of  a  personal  but  of  a  public  character; 
that  is,  for  reasons  connected  with  the  principles  in  which  I  so 
heartily  believed,  and  that  I  would  not  and  could  not  consent 
to  go  back  on  those  principles,  and  so  I  would  refuse  to  accept 
the  nomination  for  Vice-President.  Senator  Platt  again  said 
that  I  would  have  to  accept.  I  again  told  him  that  I  would  not. 
He  then  said  to  me  that  if  I  did  not  accept,  I  would  be  beaten  for 
the  nomination  for  Governor,  and  some  one  else  nominated  for 
Governor  hi  my  place.  I  answered  in  effect  that  this  was  a 
threat,  which  simply  rendered  it  impossible  for  me  to  accept, 
that  if  there  was  to  be  war  there  would  be  war,  and  that  that 
was  all  there  was  to  it ;  and  I  bowed  and  left  the  room. 


THE    CONVENTION   OF   1900  313 

"As  I  went  downstairs  to  the  room  in  which  the  New  York 
delegates  were  gathered,  I  made  up  my  mind  that  the  wise 
course  was  to  take  the  aggressive  at  once,  and  with  all  possible 
force.  Accordingly  as  soon  as  I  entered  the  room,  I  announced 
to  half  a  dozen  men  that  I  had  just  had  a  conversation  with 
Senator  Platt ;  that  Senator  Platt  had  informed  me  that  I  must 
take  the  nomination  for  the  Vice-Presidency  and  that  if  I  did 
not  I  would  not  be  nominated  for  Governor;  that  this  threat 
rendered  it  impossible  for  me  to  consider  accepting  the  Vice- 
Presidency;  that  I  intended  to  announce  immediately  that  I 
was  a  candidate  for  Governor  and  would  fight  for  the  nomina- 
tion, and  that  every  man  who  voted  for  my  nomination  for  Vice- 
President  must  do  so  with  the  understanding  that  I  would  see 
that  the  people  in  their  turn  understood  that  he  was  thus  voting 
at  the  direction  of  Mr.  Platt,  in  order  to  remove  me  from  the 
Governorship;  that  I  should  make  this  statement  instantly  in 
the  full  meeting,  that  I  would  make  it  to  the  newspapers  after- 
wards, and  that  I  would  fight  for  the  nomination  on  this  issue. 
The  minute  that  I  took  this  position  the  whole  effort  to  bring 
pressure  upon  me  collapsed.  There  was  great  confusion,  and 
one  of  Senator  Platt's  lieutenants  came  to  me  and  begged  me 
not  to  say  anything  for  a  minute  or  two  until  he  could  communi- 
cate with  the  Senator,  whom  he  was  certain  must  have  been 
misunderstood  by  me.  I  laughed  and  said  that  I  had  very 
clearly  understood  him,  but  that  of  course  I  would  wait  for  a 
few  minutes  until  he  could  be  communicated  with.  In  three 
or  four  minutes  this  gentleman  came  downstairs,  saying  that 
the  Senator  wished  to  see  me  again,  that  he  was  very  sorry  he 
had  spoken  in  a  way  that  caused  me  to  misunderstand  him,  that 
he  was  under  the  influence  of  opiate  to  reduce  the  pain  caused 
by  the  injuries  he  had  received,  and  that  he  supposed  he  had 
expressed  himself  badly  in  consequence.  Accordingly  I  went 
upstairs,  and  Mr.  Platt  substantially  repeated  this  explanation 
to  me,  saying  that  he  was  sorry  if  he  had  shown  temper  or  ex- 
pressed himself  badly,  and  that  of  course  in  view  of  my  feeling 
the  effort  to  nominate  me  for  Vice-President  would  be  aban- 
doned, and  that  he  wished  me  to  be  assured  that  he  and  all  his 
friends  would  favor  my  renomination  as  Governor.  I  thanked 
him,  bowed,  and  went  downstairs.  The  delegates  took  their 


314      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

cue  at  once.  No  further  effort  was  made  to  nominate  me  for 
the  Vice-Presidency  at  this  New  York  caucus  and  they  voted 
to  present  the  name  of  Mr.  Woodruff." 

The  caucus  of  the  New  Yorkers  had  been  held  on  Tuesday 
night,  June  19.  In  the  papers  on  Wednesday  morning,  every 
attempt  was  again  made  to  create  the  impression  that  the 
Roosevelt  candidacy  was  dead.  An  account  of  the  decision  of 
the  New  York  delegation  was  telegraphed  all  over  the  country. 
The  fact  was  nourished  that  Mr.  Roosevelt  was  advising  his 
friends  to  vote  for  ex-Secretary  John  D.  Long ;  and  the  persist- 
ent efforts  to  nominate  the  Governor  against  his  will  were 
ascribed  to  the  desire  of  the  " Bosses"  of  New  York  and  Penn- 
sylvania to  "run"  the  Convention  and  embarrass  the  adminis- 
tration. Mr.  Hanna  himself  was  at  the  bottom  of  these  re- 
newed efforts  to  get  Mr.  Roosevelt  out  of  the  way;  but  this 
time  they  had  the  appearance  of  being  forced.  The  corre- 
spondents pointed  out  that  the  matter  could  not  be  considered 
settled,  until  Mr.  Roosevelt  had  declared  definitely  that  he 
would  refuse  absolutely  to  accept  the  nomination.  No  such 
declaration  had  been  made.  In  a  statement  published  in  the 
press  on  Tuesday  morning,  he  had  said  merely  that  in  his  opin- 
ion he  could  help  the  national  ticket  most  in  case  he  were  re- 
nominated  for  Governor;  and  he  begged  his  friends  to  respect 
his  wishes. 

If  the  only  forces  working  in  favor  of  Mr.  Roosevelt's  nomina- 
tion had  been  Senator  Platt's  wish  to  transplant  such  an  "  er- 
ratic" but  thrifty  political  plant  out  of  the  green  valley  of  New 
York  state  politics  and  the  purpose  of  the  Quay  machine,  which 
had  formally  indorsed  the  Roosevelt  candidacy,  to  embarrass 
the  administration,  Mr.  Roosevelt  would  never  have  received 
the  nomination,  and  the  administration,  represented  by  Mr. 
Hanna,  would  not  have  been  in  the  least  embarrassed.  But  the 
difficulty  was  that  the  Roosevelt  candidacy  had  developed  a 
spontaneous  strength  which  astounded  the  candidate  himself 
and  really  did  embarrass  Mr.  Hanna.  Before  the  meeting  of 
the  Convention  no  one  had  suspected  either  the  extent  or  vigor 
of  the  demand  for  Mr.  Roosevelt's  nomination.  A  large  pro- 
portion of  the  Republican  voters  had  willed  that  his  name 
should  be  on  the  ticket;  and  no  amount  of  discouragement 


THE    CONVENTION   OF   1900  315 

either  from  the  candidate  or  from  the  National  Committee 
could  break  their  will.  The  delegations  from  certain  Western 
states  insisted  that  they  would  nominate  him  in  spite  of  any 
opposition  from  any  quarter.  They  would  not  listen  even  to  an 
absolute  refusal  on  the  part  of  the  candidate  himself  to  accept 
the  nomination. 

No  political  leader  in  a  democracy  can  trifle  with  a  plain 
popular  mandate  —  no  matter  how  inconvenient  its  consequences 
may  be.  Mr.  Roosevelt  was  sincere  in  his  wish  to  avoid  the 
nomination.  He  had  every  apparent  personal  interest  in  desir- 
ing to  continue  his  career  as  Governor  in  New  York.  But  he 
was  staggered  by  the  insistence  of  the  sentiment  among  the 
delegates.  For  that  reason  he  left  the  door  slightly  ajar,  and 
the  majority  of  the  Convention  pushed  him  through  the  opening. 
He  and  Mr.  Hanna,  either  alone  or  together,  could  have  beaten 
"Boss"  Platt;  but  they  could  not  and  did  not  dare  to  disobey 
their  common  master.  Such  an  unequivocal  and  enthusiastic 
expression  of  a  popular  preference  both  deserved  and  com- 
manded acquiescence,  and  in  acquiescing  Mr.  Roosevelt  had 
this  consolation.  If  from  one  point  of  view  his  transfer  to  the 
Vice-Presidency  looked  like  the  incarceration  of  a  very  promis- 
ing political  career  in  a  cold  storage  box,  from  another  point  of 
view  such  a  flattering  evidence  of  the  Sovereign's  favor  looked 
like  the  finger  of  Destiny. 

Mr.  Hanna,  on  the  other  hand,  had  no  such  consolation. 
Again  and  again  he  had  thought  and  announced  that  the  Roose- 
velt candidacy  was  dead.  But  on  Wednesday  morning,  after 
its  technical  murder  at  the  hands  of  the  New  York  state  delega- 
tion the  night  before,  it  proved  to  be  more  alive  than  ever.  Mr. 
Hanna  was  taken  by  surprise,  but  he  was  not  discouraged.  He 
had  come  to  the  Convention  with  the  intention  of  securing  a 
Vice-Presidential  candidate  who  in  his  opinion  could  be  de- 
pended upon  to  continue  Mr.  McKinley's  work,  and  he  would 
not  yield  his  purpose.  He  continued  for  some  time  further  to 
use  his  own  influence  and  the  credit  of  the  administration  in  an 
effort  to  stem  the  tide.  He  was  prepared,  if  necessary,  to  carry 
the  fight  to  the  floor  of  the  Convention.  By  so  doing  he  was 
taking  a  grave  risk,  for,  even  had  he  succeeded,  his  success  would 
have  awakened  deep  resentment.  Already  there  was  a  growing 


316      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

undertone  of  discontent  and  criticism,  because  the  general  prefer- 
ence for  Mr.  Roosevelt  was  meeting  with  organized  opposition  — 
emanating  from  the  representative  of  the  administration  at  the 
Convention. 

According  to  the  veracious  Mr.  Platt,  it  was  he  who  per- 
suaded Mr.  Hanna  to  abandon  his  opposition.  He  tells  of  a 
conference  between  the  two  on  Tuesday  night,  while  the  caucus 
of  the  New  York  delegation  was  in  session,  which  ended  in  Mr. 
Hanna's  conversion  and  the  latter's  promise  "that  night"  to 
issue  a  statement  approving  Mr.  Roosevelt  as  nominee.  This 
account  runs  on  about  the  same  level  of  accuracy  with  Mr. 
Platt's  other  contributions  to  history.  Mr.  Hanna's  statement 
was  not  given  out  on  Tuesday  night.  On  Wednesday  he  was 
systematically  collecting  all  his  own  forces  and  those  of  the 
administration  for  the  purpose  of  preventing  the  Governor's 
nomination.  What  the  result  would  have  been,  had  he  been 
allowed  to  continue  the  fight,  is  doubtful ;  but  his  own  friends 
and  those  of  Mr.  McKinley  feared  the  outcome.  They  were  as 
much  afraid  of  the  resentment,  which  would  have  been  caused 
by  an  administration  victory,  as  they  were  by  the  loss  of  prestige, 
which  would  have  resulted  from  defeat. 

A  friend  of  both  the  President  and  Mr.  Banna's,  Mr.  Charles  G. 
Dawes  of  Illinois,  who  understood  the  risk  of  further  opposition, 
expostulated  with  Mr.  Hanna.  He  was  told  that  Mr.  Hanna 
was  only  carrying  out  the  President's  wishes.  Thereupon  he 
called  up  Mr.  McKinley  on  the  long  distance  telephone,  explained 
the  situation  to  the  President  at  length  and  the  risk  of  commit- 
ting the  administration  to  any  uncompromising  opposition  to  the 
general  sentiment  of  the  Convention.  He  was  instructed  by 
Mr.  McKinley  to  ask  Mr.  Hanna  to  discontinue  all  opposition. 
As  soon  as  Mr.  Hanna  was  informed  of  the  President's  wishes 
he  immediately  yielded  —  not  without  some  chagrin  and  bitter- 
ness of  spirit,  but  with  the  loyalty  which  he  always  exhibited 
and  upon  which  the  President  confidently  counted. 

It  was  on  Wednesday  evening  that  Mr.  Hanna  learned  of  the 
President's  wishes,  and  about  the  same  time  he  was  informed 
that  the  unwilling  candidate  had  also  signified  his  consent. 
Late  that  night,  after  many  consultations  with  leaders  from  all 
over  the  country,  Mr.  Hanna  gave  out  the  following  statement: 


THE   CONVENTION   OF   1900  317 

"  The  administration  has  had  no  candidate  for  Vice-President. 
It  has  not  been  for  or  against  any  candidate.  It  has  desired 
that  the  Convention  should  make  the  candidate  and  that  has 
been  my  position  throughout.  It  has  been  a  free  field  for  all. 
Under  these  circumstances  several  eminent  Republicans  have 
been  proposed,  all  of  them  distinguished  men  with  many  friends. 
I  may  now  say  on  behalf  of  all  of  these  candidates,  and  I  except 
no  one,  I  have  within  the  last  twelve  hours  been  asked  to  give 
my  advice.  After  consulting  with  as  many  delegates  as  possible 
in  the  time  at  my  disposal  I  have  concluded  to  accept  the  re- 
sponsibility involved  in  this  request.  In  the  present  situation, 
with  the  strong  and  earnest  sentiment  of  the  delegates  from  all 
parts  of  the  country  for  Governor  Roosevelt,  and  since  President 
McKinley  is  to  be  nominated  without  a  dissenting  voice,  it  is 
my  judgment  that  Governor  Roosevelt  should  be  nominated 
with  the  same  unanimity."  This  proclamation,  which  was  very 
ingenious,  but  not  wholly  candid,  did  of  course  settle  the  matter. 
Mr.  Hanna's  " advice"  was  accepted.  No  other  name  was 
presented  to  the  Convention  for  Vice-Presidential  candidate; 
but  curiously  enough  it  was  not  presented  by  the  candidate's 
own  state.  The  effective  demand  for  Mr.  Roosevelt's  nomina- 
tion had  come  from  the  West,  and  to  Iowa,  as  the  only  Western 
state  which  had  favored  a  serious  local  candidate,  was  accorded 
the  honor  of  placing  Mr.  Roosevelt's  name  before  the  Conven- 
tion. Colonel  Lafayette  Young  made  the  speech  accompanying 
the  nomination,  and  Mr.  Roosevelt  received  925  votes  out  of 
926  —  one  delegate  from  New  York,  presumably  the  candidate 
himself,  having  failed  to  vote. 

The  dislike  which  President  McKinley  and  Mr.  Hanna  felt 
towards  Mr.  Roosevelt  as  Vice-Presidential  nominee  was  nat- 
ural, but  the  immediate  effect  of  the  nomination  was  as  fortu- 
nate for  them  as  its  ultimate  effects  were  for  Mr.  Roosevelt. 
The  Republican  ticket  was  decidedly  strengthened  by  the 
presence  on  it  of  one  who  at  that  time  was,  more  than  any  other 
single  man,  the  hero  of  the  Cuban  war.  The  facts  that  both  the 
President  and  Mr.  Hanna  had  been  opposed  to  the  war,  that 
they  had  been  reluctant  to  accept  its  consequences,  and  that  in 
their  political  system  the  most  important  object  of  political 
policy  was  the  encouragement  of  business,  —  all  these  facts  made 


318      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

them  underestimate  the  effect  of  the  war  on  public  opinion.  It 
was  the  popularity  of  the  war  hi  the  West  which  had  saved 
them  hi  the  Congressional  election  of  the  fall  of  1898 ;  and  it  was 
the  same  element  hi  public  opinion  which  at  the  Philadelphia 
Convention  had  demanded  the  nomination  of  the  Colonel  of 
Rough  Riders.  Thus  Mr.  Roosevelt  added  a  kind  of  strength 
to  the  ticket  which  it  could  not  have  obtained  from  the  success 
of  any  alternative  candidate. 

That  the  promised  revival  of  business  had  taken  place  during 
Mr.  McKinley's  administration  constituted  unquestionably  the 
President's  best  claim  for  reelection.  If  the  country  had  not 
become  relatively  prosperous,  the  Republicans  would  surely 
have  been  defeated.  But  just  in  proportion  as  prosperity  re- 
turned, it  lost  some  of  its  value  as  a  political  issue.  A  hungry 
man  can  think  of  nothing  but  food,  but  when  the  hunger  is 
satisfied  he  needs  other  interests.  The  war  had  aroused  na- 
tional feeling  and  had  made  the  people  more  alive  to  their  joint 
national  interest.  It  had  given  to  the  American  people  a  new 
sense  of  the  meaning  of  American  nationality  and  of  the  scope 
of  American  national  purposes.  All  these  vague  emotions  and 
ideas  demanded  some  medium  of  expression.  If  the  Republi- 
can ticket  had  not  provided  them  with  a  candidate  who  appealed, 
as  Mr.  Roosevelt  did,  to  their  patriotic  imagination  and  aspira- 
tions, it  would  have  failed  wholly  to  satisfy  a  widespread  and 
vital  element  hi  public  opinion.  Against  their  own  will  Mr. 
McKinley  and  Mr.  Hanna  had  called  to  their  support  the  one 
man  who  could  most  effectively  supplement  their  own  strength 
with  the  American  people  —  the  one  man  who  could  make  the 
ticket  represent  the  nationalism  of  the  future  as  well  as  that  of 
the  past  and  of  the  present. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE   CAMPAIGN   OF   1900 

IN  spite  of  the  threatened  conflict  over  the  nomination  for 
Vice-President,  the  Convention  of  1900  was,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  party  harmony  and  efficiency,  one  of  the  most  successful 
ever  held  by  the  Republicans.  It  named  a  ticket  which  was  as 
capable  of  vigorous  aggression  as  it  was  impregnable  on  the 
defence.  The  whole  party  was  confident  of  success  and  eager  to 
contribute  to  it.  Never  had  the  Republicans  been  more  effi- 
ciently organized  and  more  competently  led.  The  leaders  had 
the  confidence  of  the  army.  The  army  was  not  divided  against 
itself.  They  felt  that  they  represented  the  better  part  of  the 
nation  and  that  in  their  persons  the  nation  was  marching  on  to 
new  industrial  conquests  and  towards  new  political  horizons. 

Mr.  McKinley  was  apparently  as  much  pleased  with  the  final 
result  and  the  means  whereby  it  had  been  reached  as  was 
the  average  Republican.  As  soon  as  the  Convention  was  over, 
he  wrote  from  Washington  to  Mr.  Hanna,  who  had  gone  to 
Cleveland,  the  following  letter :  — 

"DEAR  SENATOR:  — 

"I  am  greatly  pleased  with  the  work  of  the  Convention. 
You  have  added  another  claim  to  leadership  and  public  con- 
fidence. All  comers  from  the  Convention  commend  you  and 
all  accord  you  the  courage  and  sagacity  of  true  leadership. 

"I  am  delighted  that  you  have  accepted  the  Chairmanship 
of  the  National  Committee.  It  is  a  great  task  and  will  be  to 
you  a  great  sacrifice.  Before  you  arrange  for  the  Director  of  the 
Speaking  Bureau,  I  will  be  glad  to  talk  with  you. 

"  Hoping  you  will  get  some  much  needed  rest  and  find  your 
family  well,  believe  me, 

"  Your  true  friend, 

"WILLIAM  McKiNLEY." 
319 


320      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

It  had  already  been  announced  that  Mr.  Hanna  would 
again  head  the  National  Committee.  Everybody  had  assumed, 
as  a  matter  of  course,  that  he  would  do  so.  His  selection 
for  the  place  was  only  a  proper  recognition  of  his  service  to 
the  administration  and  the  party  and  his  proved  ability  as  a 
campaign  manager.  Yet  there  was  a  period  of  some  weeks 
previous  to  the  meeting  of  the  Convention,  during  which  Mr. 
Hanna  himself  began  to  suspect  and  fear  that  he  would  not  be 
selected.  The  naming  of  the  Chairman  was  the  practical 
prerogative  of  the  head  of  the  ticket;  and  Mr.  McKinley's 
behavior  was  at  least  suspicious. 

Early  in  the  spring  of  1900  Mr.  Hanna  began  complaining  to 
certain  of  his  intimate  associates  that  Mr.  McKinley  had  said 
nothing  to  him  about  managing  the  coming  campaign.  Time 
passed  and  still  nothing  was  said.  Mr.  Hanna  became  very 
much  worried.  The  moment  arrived  when  preparations  ought 
to  be  made  and  when  it  was  natural  that  the  matter  should  be 
settled.  The  worry  seems  to  have  had  a  damaging  effect  on  his 
health.  Late  in  April  he  had  an  attack  of  heart  failure,  while 
writing  a  note  in  his  office,  and  faulted  away.  He  recovered 
almost  immediately  and  even  went  that  same  night  to  the 
theatre;  but  his  intimates,  who  knew  his  physical  habits  and 
realized  how  distressed  he  was,  attributed  the  attack  to  the 
anxiety  caused  by  the  President's  persistent  silence.  If  at  that 
particular  juncture  Mr.  Hanna  had  been  superseded  as  Chairman 
of  the  National  Committee,  one  of  the  most  essential  supports 
of  his  personal  prestige  and  power  would  have  been  removed. 
It  would  have  meant  that  he  no  longer  retained  the  friend- 
ship and  confidence  of  the  President.  Fortunately,  however,  his 
suspense  was  not  further  prolonged.  A  little  later  Mr.  Hanna 
appeared  at  his  office  one  morning  with  every  trace  of  anxiety 
vanished  from  his  face  and  in  the  highest  spirits.  Mr.  McKin- 
ley had  the  night  before  asked  him  to  accept  the  office  and  its 
work,  and  had  insisted  upon  his  immediate  and  unqualified 
consent. 

Considering  the  relations  between  the  two  men,  one's  natu- 
ral suspicion  would  be  that  Mr.  Hanna's  anxiety  was  due  to 
over-sensitiveness,  and  that  Mr.  McKinley  had  never  even  con- 
sidered the  selection  of  another  Chairman.  But  from  remarks 


THE   CAMPAIGN   OF    1900  321 

which  Mr.  McKinley  made  to  other  people,  it  is  probable  that 
the  President  really  was  hesitating.  How  serious  the  hesitation 
was,  and  upon  precisely  what  grounds  it  was  based,  remains 
obscure ;  but  unquestionably  at  this  period  a  certain  alteration 
was  taking  place  in  the  relationship  between  the  two  men.  The 
President's  delay  in  asking  Mr.  Hanna  to  serve  as  Chairman,  and 
Mr.  Hanna's  consequent  anxiety,  was  only  the  first  of  a  series  of 
incidents  which  indicated  such  a  change.  The  incidents  will 
all  be  told  frankly,  because  they  are  part  of  the  true  story  of 
Mr.  Hanna's  life.  They  indicate  not  any  estrangement,  but 
simply  the  stress  under  which  an  old  and  fast  friendship  was 
adapting  itself  to  new  conditions.  The  new  condition  was  Mr0 
Hanna's  increasing  personal  power  as  a  Congressional  and  as  a 
popular  leader.  This  power  was  assuming  such  formidable 
dimensions  that  the  President  might  well  begin  to  wonder  how 
his  own  prestige  was  beginning  to  look  by  comparison.  But  in 
spite  of  the  strain,  the  testimony  is  unanimous  that  at  the  end 
of  the  campaign  the  friendship  of  the  two  men  remained  sub- 
stantially unimpaired. 

Whatever  the  grounds  of  the  President's  hesitation,  he  really 
did  not  have  a  practicable  alternative.  No  other  man  had  a 
tithe  of  the  qualifications  possessed  by  Mr.  Hanna  for  the 
office  of  Chairman.  He  could  have  claimed  it,  merely  because 
of  his  ability  as  a  campaign  manager,  even  though  as  a  political 
leader  he  was  less  popular  than  was  actually  the  case.  Mr. 
Hanna  alone  had  in  his  mind  a  complete  and  accurate  map  of  the 
political  landscape.  He  knew  just  what  the  situation  was  hi 
the  different  parts  of  the  country,  and  just  what  states  needed 
and  would  repay  the  most  arduous  efforts  for  their  retention  or 
conquest.  During  the  four  years  that  had  elapsed  since  the 
previous  campaign  he  had  been  studying  the  conditions  and 
opportunities  which  would  be  presented  in  1900.  Responsibil- 
ity for  the  work  could  not  have  been  shifted  without  confusion, 
cross  purposes  and  loss  of  efficiency. 

Mr.  Hanna's  personal  relation  to  the  work  in  1900  was  very 
much  the  same  as  it  had  been  four  years  earlier.  He  was  the 
real  supervisor  and  director  of  the  whole  campaign.  Its  man- 
agement was  absolutely  his.  Of  course,  he  constantly  consulted 
the  President  and  other  leaders ;  but,  as  in  the  case  of  any  other 


322      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

efficient  general,  he  acted  often  on  his  own  initiative  and  his  own 
personal  responsibility.  His  private  secretary,  Mr.  Elmer 
Dover,  states  that  he  laid  out  the  actual  work  of  a  campaign 
without  taking  any  one  into  his  confidence.  His  plan  was,  as 
in  1896,  based  on  what  he  believed  to  be  the  general  condition 
of  public  opinion  throughout  the  Union,  from  which  he  inferred 
how  much  work  needed  to  be  done,  where  it  should  be  placed 
and  what  its  character  ought  to  be.  As  in  1896,  also,  the  work 
was  planned  to  be  cumulative  in  its  effect,  culminating  a  few 
days  before  the  election  in  an  outburst  of  common  conviction 
and  enthusiasm.  Early  in  the  campaign  even  his  ultimate 
associates  were  puzzled  as  to  his  reasons  for  making  certain 
moves,  but  their  relation  to  the  general  plan  was  gradually  un- 
folded. Every  part  of  the  work  was  well  organized,  and  every 
part  of  the  organization  was  thoroughly  energized. 

Of  course  his  task  was  much  less  onerous  than  it  had  been  in 
1896.  He  did  not  have  an  uphill  fight  on  his  hands,  or  an 
almost  country-wide  campaign  of  popular  instruction.  He  did 
not  employ  as  many  speakers,  nor  did  he  need  to  distribute  as 
much  literature.  It  is  true  that  with  his  usual  habit  of  making 
a  sure  thing  doubly  sure,  he  canvassed  the  country  much  more 
thoroughly  than  it  ever  had  been  canvassed  before  1896.  But 
with  every  intention  in  the  world  of  leaving  nothing  undone 
which  could  possibly  contribute  to  Republican  success,  there 
was  very  much  less  to  do.  In  1900,  as  in  the  campaigns  pre- 
vious to  1896,  certain  results  in  many  parts  of  the  country  could 
be  taken  for  granted.  The  hard  canvassing  could  be  concen- 
trated on  a  smaller  area  of  peculiar  strategic  importance.  To 
continue  the  military  analogy,  he  was  operating  in  a  familiar 
and  a  friendly  country,  instead  of  hi  a  country  which  was  hos- 
tile and  comparatively  unexplored. 

He  needed,  consequently,  much  less  money,  and  what  money 
he  needed  he  had  much  less  difficulty  in  raising.  In  1900  the 
total  collections  were  approximately  82,500,000,  and  not  all  of 
this  sum  was  used.  By  this  time  Mr.  Hanna  enjoyed  the  com- 
plete confidence  of  the  big  business  men  of  the  country.  They 
would  have  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  Committee  just  as 
much  money  as  he  demanded.  If  he  did  not  raise  any  more 
than  $2,500,000,  it  was  because  the  expenditure  of  a  larger  sum 


THE   CAMPAIGN  OF   1900  323 

would  have  contributed  nothing  to  the  chances  of  Republican 
success. 

A  significant  change  had  taken  place  since  1896  in  the  nature 
and  reasons  of  the  support  which  business  men  were  affording 
to  the  Republican  party.  Four  years  before  the  responsible  busi- 
ness interests  of  the  country,  small  as  well  as  large,  had  united 
in  condemning  the  free  coinage  of  silver.  A  certain  amount  of 
the  same  feeling  was  carried  over  into  the  campaign  of  1900. 
The  fact  that  Mr.  Bryan  was  again  running  on  a  free-silver 
platform,  and  the  fact  that  even  though  elected  on  the  issue  of 
anti-Imperialism,  he  might  be  able  and  willing  to  disestablish 
the  gold  standard,  took  the  heart  out  of  business  during  the 
summer  of  1900.  The  issue,  however,  between  financial  aberra- 
tion and  financial  sanity  could  not  be  as  sharply  drawn  as  it  had 
been  in  1896,  and  there  was  a  tendency  among  smaller  business 
men  to  return  to  their  traditional  partisan  allegiance.  The 
Republicans  could  not  demand  the  support  of  business  just 
because  it  was  business.  They  could  not  assess  the  National 
Banks  all  over  the  country  for  a  certain  percentage  of  their  capi- 
tal, because  Democratic  success  would  certainly  cause  acute 
financial  disaster. 

During  the  years  between  the  two  campaigns  certain  classes  of 
American  business  had  been  radically  reorganized.  The  pro- 
cess of  combination  had  made  enormous  strides.  It  had  in- 
fected more  or  less  every  important  department  of  industry. 
It  had,  indeed,  become  the  dominant  characteristic  of  American 
industrial  practice.  But  in  proportion  as  this  process  of  com- 
bination increased  in  volume,  it  became  subject  to  political 
attack.  The  large  corporations  had  a  doubtful  standing  under 
state  and  federal  anti-trust  acts.  They  were  not  overscrupu- 
lous about  conducting  their  business  according  to  fair  and  legal 
methods.  Even  those  whose  standing  under  existing  laws  was 
unimpeachable  were  liable  to  severe  injury  from  adverse  state 
and  national  legislation.  Agitation  against  them  and  against 
the  millionnaires  interested  in  them  was  becoming  both  violent 
and  widespread.  The  large  business  interests  could  no  more 
disregard  the  sort  of  denunciation  which  was  more  than  ever 
hurled  at  them  than  the  Southern  slaveholders  could  ignore  the 
denunciation  of  the  abolitionists ;  and  its  effect  in  the  two  cases 


324      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

was  very  much  the  same.  Big  business  men  became  "class 
conscious."  They  needed  political  power  more  than  ever  for 
the  protection  of  business  interests,  and  the  power  which  may 
have  been  acquired  in  self-protection  would  inevitably  be  used 
for  aggressive  purposes. 

In  1900,  consequently,  it  was  as  much  big  business  as  general 
business  which  began  to  depend  upon  the  Republican  party  for 
political  protection.  The  Democratic  platform  and  candidate 
denounced  the  process  of  business  organization,  while  the  Repub- 
lican candidate  and  platform  recognized  that  it  had  a  certain 
validity.  The  whole  corporation  interest  rallied  more  enthu- 
siastically than  ever  to  the  Republicans  and  opened  its  purse 
more  liberally  than  ever.  To  be  sure,  the  distinction  between 
big  business  and  general  business  was  not  sharply  drawn.  The 
"prosperity"  of  which  the  Republicans  boasted  and  which  they 
promised  to  continue  was  necessary  to  both,  and  the  waving  of 
the  "prosperity"  banner  was  intended  to  appeal  to  both. 
Nevertheless,  the  distinction  had  become  plainer  than  it  was  in 
1896,  and  it  had  a  profound  bearing  upon  the  campaign  and  its 
results.  When  Mr.  McKinley  was  reflected,  big  business  un- 
doubtedly considered  that  it  had  received  a  license  from  the 
people  to  do  very  much  as  it  pleased. 

Mr.  Hanna  himself  never  distinguished  sharply  between  the 
interests  of  general  business  and  big  business.  His  own  busi- 
ness life,  except  in  relation  to  the  street  railway  company,  had 
never  become  entangled  either  with  the  methods  or  the  interests 
characteristic  of  the  larger  corporations.  He  intended  to  repre- 
sent in  politics  the  essential  interest  of  business  itself  —  irrespec- 
tive of  size,  location,  organization  or  character.  The  "pros- 
perity" which  he  wished  to  promote  was  necessary  to  all  sorts 
of  business,  and  the  policy  of  his  opponents  was  dangerous  to 
all  sorts  of  business.  Farther  than  that  he  did  not  go.  Never- 
theless, the  necessities  of  practical  politics  brought  him  closer 
and  closer  to  the  representatives  of  large  corporate  interests.  It 
was  much  more  convenient  to  get  the  money  needed  for  an  effec- 
tive campaign  from  them  than  from  a  larger  number  of  smaller 
subscribers ;  and  such  was  particularly  the  case  because  the 
smaller  business  men  were  much  less  conscious  of  their  political 
interests  and  responsibilities  than  were  their  more  opulent  asso- 


THE   CAMPAIGN   OF   1900  325 

elates.  Mr.  Hanna  wanted,  as  usual,  to  accomplish  the  largest 
and  surest  results  with  the  utmost  economy  of  time.  So  in 
1900  he  solicited  and  obtained  support  from  Wall  Street  more 
explicitly  and  more  exclusively  than  he  had  in  1896. 

The  explicit  recognition  on  the  part  of  the  contributors  that 
they  were  paying  for  a  definite  service  enabled  Mr.  Hanna  still 
further  to  systematize  the  work  of  collection.  The  size  of  a 
contribution  from  any  particular  corporation  was  not  left  wholly 
to  the  liberality  or  discretion  of  its  officers.  An  attempt  was 
made  with  some  measure  of  success  to  make  every  corporation 
pay  according  to  its  stake  in  the  general  prosperity  of  the  coun- 
try and  according  to  its  special  interest  in  a  region  in  which  a 
large  amount  of  expensive  canvassing  had  to  be  done.  In  case 
an  exceptionally  opulent  corporation  or  business  firm  contrib- 
uted decidedly  less  than  was  considered  its  fair  proportion,  the 
checque  might  be  returned.  There  are  a  number  of  such  cases  on 
record.  On  the  other  hand,  an  excessively  liberal  subscription 
might  also  be  sent  back  in  part  —  assuming,  of  course,  that  the 
Committee  had  collected  as  much  money  as  it  needed,  or  more. 

The  Standard  Oil  Company  contributed  $250,000  in  1900,  as  it 
had  done  in  1896;  and  there  was,  I  believe,  only  one  other  con- 
tribution received  by  the  Committee  of  the  same  size.  When 
the  election  was  over  the  officials  of  the  Company  were  astounded 
to  receive  a  letter  from  the  Committee  containing  a  check  for 
$50,000.  They  had  contributed  more  than  their  share,  and  the 
surplus  over  and  above  the  necessities  of  the  campaign  per- 
mitted the  Committee  to  reimburse  them  to  that  extent.  Inci- 
dents of  this  kind  naturally  increased  the  confidence  of  business 
men  in  the  new  management  of  the  Republican  party.  Money 
was  not  being  extorted  from  them  on  political  pretexts  for  the 
benefit  of  political  professionals.  They  were  paying  a  definite 
sum  in  return  for  protection  against  political  attacks.  Imagine 
the  feelings  of  an  ordinary  political  "Boss"  upon  learning  that 
good  sound  dollars,  which  had  been  received  as  a  political  con- 
tribution, were  actually  being  returned  to  their  donors. 

Instances  of  this  kind  indicate  that  Mr.  Hanna  had  intro- 
duced some  semblance  of  business  method  into  a  system  of 
campaign  contributions,  which  at  its  worst  had  fluctuated  some- 
where between  the  extremes  of  blackmail  and  bribery.  If  it 


326      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND  WORK 

had  been  allowed  to  develop  farther,  the  system  might  have 
become  a  sort  of  unofficial  taxation  which  a  certain  class  of 
business  was  obliged  to  pay,  because  in  one  way  or  another  its 
prosperity  and  even  its  safety  had  become  dependent  upon  the 
political  management  of  the  country.  Even  in  the  extreme  form 
which  it  assumed  in  1900,  the  system  itself  remained  the  natural 
outcome  of  a  relation  between  business  and  politics,  which  the 
politico-economic  history  of  the  country  had  conspired  to  pro- 
duce and  for  which  in  a  very  real  sense  the  mass  of  the  American 
people  were  just  as  much  responsible  as  were  its  beneficiaries  and 
perpetrators.  Mr.  Hanna  merely  developed  it,  and  removed 
from  it,  so  far  as  possible,  the  taint  of  ordinary  corruption. 
Just  as  the  work  performed  by  individuals  on  behalf  of  McKin- 
ley's  first  nomination  was  never  paid  for  by  the  promise  of  par- 
ticular offices,  so  these  contributions  were  not  accepted  in  return 
for  the  promise  of  particular  favors.  In  one  instance  a  cheque 
for  $10,000  was  returned  to  a  firm  of  bankers  in  Wall  Street 
because  a  definite  service  was  by  implication  demanded  in  re- 
turn for  the  contribution.  The  men  whose  hands  went  deepest 
into  their  pockets  understood  in  general  that,  if  the  Republicans 
won,  the  politics  of  the  country  would  be  managed  in  the  interest 
of  business  —  a  consequence  which  was  acknowledged  by  all  the 
Republican  speakers  and  by  none  so  frankly  as  by  Mark  Hanna. 
But  the  more  the  practice  of  assessing  corporate  interests  for 
the  benefit  of  one  party  was  reduced  to  a  system,  the  more  im- 
possible it  became.  The  very  means  which  were  taken  by 
business  to  protect  itself  against  hostile  political  agitation  was 
bound  in  the  long  run  to  inflame  the  irritation;  and  the  more 
the  irritation  became  inflamed,  the  greater  the  injury  which  busi- 
ness would  suffer  when  it  eventually  lost  control.  The  intimate 
association  of  business  prosperity  with  illegal  and  unfair  business 
practices  was  bound  to  make  general  business,  whether  innocent 
or  guilty,  pay  the  final  costs.  It  is  extraordinary  that  the  hard- 
headed  men  who  throughout  so  many  years  spent  so  much 
money  for  political  protection,  did  not  realize  that  business 
could  not  permanently  succeed  in  having  its  own  way  in  politics 
by  the  use  of  merely  business  means  and  methods  —  without 
corrupting  the  country.  The  prevailing  tendency  of  politics  to 
ignore  business  in  the  treatment  of  business  questions  is  merely 


THE    CAMPAIGN   OF   1900  327 

the  inevitable  consequence  of  the  tendency  of  business,  when  it 
had  political  power,  to  exercise  it  in  a  manner  which  ignored  the 
fundamental  political  well-being  of  a  democratic  state. 

In  making  use  of  his  abundant  resources  hi  1900  Mr.  Hanna 
was  not  trying,  as  he  had  been  in  1896,  merely  to  win  the  elec- 
tion. He  was  planning  a  victory  so  decisive  and  so  comprehen- 
sive that  the  Republicans  would  be  unquestionably  marked  as 
the  dominant  party.  He  was  planning  above  all  as  a  matter  of 
practical  politics  to  increase  the  narrow  Republican  majority  in 
the  Senate,  and  thus  to  obtain  a  more  effective  and  responsible 
control  over  legislation  than  the  party  had  hitherto  possessed. 
Where  he  expected  to  make  the  necessary  gains  was  west  of  the 
Mississippi  River.  He  counted  on  being  able  to  keep  all  the 
Eastern  States  which  went  Republican  in  1896.  He  was  just 
as  confident  that  the  Middle  West  would  stick  to  its  allegiance. 
A  very  general  impression  existed  that  Indiana  would  go  Demo- 
cratic, but  Mr.  Hanna  insisted  that  he  could  win  it.  He  devoted 
a  great  deal  of  time  to  that  state,  and  he  succeeded.  But  the 
part  of  the  country  in  which  he  was  most  interested  was  the 
territory  west  of  the  Mississippi  River,  which  had  formerly  been 
Republican,  but  which  since  the  rise  of  "Populism"  had  fallen 
away  from  the  true  faith.  The  results  of  the  Congressional 
elections  of  1898  encouraged  him  to  believe  that  possibly  the 
great  majority  of  these  states  could  be  carried.  In  spite  of  the 
popularity  of  Bryan  in  the  region  and  the  enthusiastic  indorse- 
ment of  the  Democratic  ticket  by  all  the  "Populistic"  organiza- 
tions, he  proposed  to  concentrate  his  biggest  guns  on  the  Far 
West.  He  himself  spent  two-thirds  of  his  time  in  Chicago  and 
only  one-third  in  New  York. 

Mr.  McKinley,  as  President,  could  not  play  as  important  a 
part  in  the  campaign  as  he  had  in  1896 ;  but  in  his  Vice-Presi- 
dential candidate  Mr.  Hanna  had  a  most  effective  substitute  for 
the  vacancy.  Mr.  Roosevelt  was  as  indefatigable  a  speaker  and 
traveller  as  Mr.  Bryan  himself,  and  the  National  Committee 
used  him  to  the  limit  of  his  endurance.  Mr.  Hanna  was  not 
slow  to  perceive  how  much  assistance  Mr.  Roosevelt  might 
be  to  him  in  carrying  the  Northwestern  States.  It  was  the 
Republicans  of  this  region  who  had  been  most  stirred  by  the 
war  and  most  clamorous  for  Mr.  Roosevelt's  nomination. 


328      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

Hence,  while  the  Vice-Presidential  candidate  stumped  the  whole 
country,  the  emphasis  of  his  canvass  was  given  to  the  West. 
He  was  by  far  the  most  prominent  Republican  speaker  during 
the  campaign,  and  made  a  substantial  contribution  to  the  de- 
cisive nature  of  the  Republican  triumph.  More  so  than  any 
other  Vice-President  who  became  President,  his  services  gave 
him  a  certain  subordinate  claim  on  the  major  office. 

In  spite  of  Mr.  Hanna's  confidence  he  had  some  bad  moments 
during  the  campaign.  In  the  beginning  there  was  too  much  of 
a  disposition  among  th£  Republicans  to  take  victory  for  granted ; 
and  the  manager  had  to  exert  himself  unnecessarily  in  order  to 
put  enough  energy  into  his  associates.  He  was  continually 
complaining  that  not  he,  but  General  Apathy,  was  running  the 
campaign.  The  earlier  period  of  overconfidence  was  succeeded 
by  a  slump,  particularly  among  business  men.  Many  of  them 
could  not  dismiss  the  idea  of  the  dire  consequences  of  Mr.  Bryan's 
election,  and  until  the  threat  was  removed  the  process  of  busi- 
ness expansion  ceased.  Trade  was  slack  during  the  summer  and 
fall.  Many  laborers  were  out  of  employment  and  many  dinner- 
pails  were  empty.  Certain  Republicans  became  alarmed  at  the 
outlook.  They  wrote  to  Mr.  Hanna,  anxiously  telling  about  the 
number  of  former  McKinley  votes  which  were  being  transferred 
to  Bryan,  and  recommending  the  most  strenuous  efforts.  But 
Mr.  Hanna  was  never  really  alarmed.  His  confidence  was  based 
on  the  results  of  the  most  careful  canvasses  made  in  doubtful 
states.  But,  of  course,  he  continued  to  take  every  precaution. 
He  used  all  his  influence  among  the  manufacturers  to  get  them 
to  keep  as  many  men  as  possible  on  their  pay-rolls,  until  business 
revived  after  the  election.  He  personally  interfered  to  put  an 
end  to  an  embarrassing  strike  in  the  anthracite  coal  regions  of 
Pennsylvania.  In  these  and  other  ways  his  personal  power  over 
business  was  used  for  the  benefit  of  the  ticket.  Until  the  end  he 
never  fully  betrayed  how  confident  he  felt.  His  own  tour 
through  the  Northwest  late  in  October  was  proof  positive  that 
he  was  convinced  of  Republican  victory  in  the  East  and  the 
Middle  West. 

Two  of  the  most  important  incidents  of  the  campaign  from 
Mr.  Hanna's  personal  point  of  view  involved  his  relations  with 
the  President,  and  they  must  be  told  in  some  detail.  The  first 


THE   CAMPAIGN  OF   1900  329 

concerns  a  matter  of  campaign  methods.  In  it  Mr.  McKinley's 
action  was  irreproachable,  but  his  manner  was  such  that  one  can 
hardly  blame  Mr.  Hanna  for  being  annoyed.  On  August  3,  he 
wrote  the  following  letter  to  the  President :  — 

"MY  DEAR  MR.  PRESIDENT:  — 

"Chairman  Odell  has  been  talking  with  me  with  reference  to 
two  matters  which  seem  to  be  of  very  great  importance  to  this 
state. 

"The  first  is  the  discrimination  against  the  Brooklyn  Navy 
Yard  with  the  consequent  laying  off  of  men.  This  means,  in 
addition  to  the  voters  themselves,  that  the  tradesmen  and  others 
over  there  are  inclined  to  believe  that  Brooklyn  is  not  getting  its 
share  of  the  work.  Mr.  Odell  informs  me  that  the  work  is  being 
sent  to  the  Boston  Navy  Yard,  where  there  is  a  lack  of  men  to 
work,  while  here  men  are  being  discharged.  He  also  tells  me 
that  he  has  wired  you  concerning  it,  and  he  believes  it  to  be  very 
important,  as  it  means  the  loss  of  several  hundred  votes  in  that 
particular  direction. 

"Another  matter  in  which  he  is  interested  is  the  employment 
of  men  at  Iowa  Island  on  the  Hudson  River,  where  a  man  by 
the  name  of  Dugan,  Sergeant  Dugan,  is  in  charge.  He  has  em- 
ployed Democrats,  and  in  one  instance  has  contemptuously 
thrown  aside  a  letter  of  recommendation  from  the  member  of 
Congress  from  that  district. 

"Very  truly  yours, 

"M.  A.  HANNA." 

Some  days  later  Mr.  Hanna  received  the  following  answer  to  his 
complaints :  — 

PERSONAL 

"DEAR  SENATOR  HANNA:  — 

"Mr.  Dawes  has  just  called  here  and  presented  to  me  your 
letter  of  August  3d  addressed  to  me  and  one  of  the  same  date 
addressed  to  him. 

"I  am  sure  when  you  know  the  facts  you  will  have  no  reason 
for  criticism  or  complaint.  Mr.  Odell  telegraphed  me  with 
reference  to  the  Brooklyn  Navy  Yard.  I  at  once  communi- 
cated with  Secretary  Long  and  received  a  most  satisfactory 


330      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

reply,  a  copy  of  which  I  enclose.  It  would  not  be  right,  and  I 
am  sure  you  would  not  have  the  Department  employ  men  at  the 
Navy  Yard  who  are  not  needed,  nor  would  you  have  work  done 
there  which  could  be  best  done  at  some  other  Navy  Yard  in  the 
country. 

"With  reference  to  the  letter  of  Mr.  Litchman  which  you  for- 
ward, addressed  to  you,  complaining  that  an  order  had  been 
issued  by  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  forbidding  travel  on  the 
part  of  any  of  the  employees  of  that  Department,  unless  the  order 
for  travel  is  given  by  the  Secretary  or  Assistant  Secretary  and 
signed  by  the  same,  it  would  seem  to  me  that  this  is  a  wise  safe- 
guard. Surely  there  should  be  no  travel  expense  paid  by  the 
Government  which  is  not  for  the  public  service,  and  I  am  abso- 
lutely and  totally  opposed  to  any  use  of  the  public  money  for 
travel  or  any  other  expense  for  party  interests;  and  in  this 
sentiment  I  know  you  share. 

"As  to  the  conduct  of  Sergeant  Dugan  at  lona  Island  on  the 
Hudson,  referred  to,  I  know  nothing  about  it,  but  will  at  once 
make  an  investigation.  If  he  is  using  his  office  for  the  appoint- 
ment of  Democrats  for  party  purposes,  he  shall  be  called  to  ac- 
count. This  is  a  time  when  every  effort  will  be  made  to  have 
the  administration  do  questionable  things.  It  is  a  period  of 
great  temptation,  just  the  sort  that  will  require  the  highest 
courage  to  meet  and  resist.  If  elected  I  have  to  live  with  the 
administration  for  four  years.  I  do  not  want  to  feel  that  any 
improper  or  questionable  methods  have  been  employed  to  reach 
the  place,  and  you  must  continue,  as  you  have  always  done,  to 
stand  against  unreasonable  exactions,  which  are  so  common  at 
a  time  like  the  present. 

"  Very  sincerely  yours, 

(Signed)  "WILLIAM  McKiNLEY." 

After  Mr.  Hanna  had  read  the  foregoing  letter  he  threw  it  on 
the  floor  in  great  irritation ;  and  since  apparently  the  President's 
position  was  unassailable,  the  cause  of  his  irritation  needs  some 
explanation.  In  requesting  that  during  a  campaign  employees  of 
the  government  should  not  be  discharged  and  the  distribution  of 
departmental  work  arranged  so  as  to  hurt  the  canvass  of  the  party 
in  power,  Mr.  Hanna  was  only  doing  what  previous  Chairmen  of 


THE    CAMPAIGN   OF    1900  331 

the  National  Committee  had  done.  Local  campaign  managers 
were  continually  making  demands  of  that  kind  on  the  Committee, 
and  the  Committee  had  been  accustomed  to  pay  too  much  atten- 
tion to  them.  In  the  same  way  it  had  been  customary  for  cer- 
tain employees  of  the  Treasury  department  to  "travel"  in  the 
interest  of  the  party  in  power,  although  when  they  travelled 
their  expenses,  so  I  am  informed,  were  paid  not  by  the  govern- 
ment but  by  the  National  Committee.  Neither  of  these  prac- 
tices can  be  defended,  and  Mr.  McKinley  in  repudiating  them 
was  contributing,  as  he  did  in  so  many  other  instances,  towards 
the  establishment  of  higher  administrative  standards.  Usu- 
ally the  President  and  Mr.  Hanna  agreed  in  not  allowing  politi- 
cal considerations  any  more  weight  than  could  be  helped  in  the 
conduct  of  government  business ;  but  pursued  as  he  was  by  the 
demands  of  local  committees  and  leaders,  and  responsible  as  he 
was  for  Republican  success,  Mr.  Hanna  was  inclined  to  yield 
more  frequently  than  was  the  President  himself.  When  such 
cases  arose,  Mr.  McKinley's  action  in  refusing  indefensible  de- 
mands was  often  admitted  by  Mr.  Hanna  to  be  as  much  for 
his  own  protection  as  for  the  President's. 

What  aroused  his  irritation  in  this  particular  instance  was 
not  so  much  the  fact  of  Mr.  McKinley's  refusal  as  its  form. 
The  President's  letter  had  been  written  with  more  than  usual 
care  and  had  been  copied  for  the  White  House  file,  thus  becom- 
ing a  matter  of  public  record.  Mr.  Hanna  apparently  believed 
that  the  form  of  the  letter  and  the  necessary  publicity  attached 
to  it  was  prompted  in  the  President  by  a  desire  to  secure  full  public 
credit  for  his  action  —  even  if  such  credit  were  obtained  some- 
what at  his  friend's  expense.  As  Mr.  Hanna  put  it,  the  letter 
had  been  written  as  much  for  the  President's  biography  as  for 
the  immediate  occasion.  No  doubt  it  is  true  that  Mr.  McKin- 
ley throughout  his  official  career  kept  his  biographer  a  good  deal 
in  mind ;  but  it  is  no  less  true  that  he  had  in  the  present  instance 
a  valid  reason  for  giving  his  refusal  official  publicity.  He 
thereby  established  an  authentic  precedent,  which  might  help 
to  emancipate  both  himself  and  his  successors  from  similar 
demands. 

Later  in  the  campaign  another  incident  occurred  which  also 
provoked  in  Mr.  Hanna  a  temporary  resentment.  Throughout 


332      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

the  whole  canvass  there  had  been  lively  demands  on  the  part 
of  various  state  committees  for  Mr.  Hanna's  services  as  a  stump 
speaker.  He  had  in  the  past  made  very  few  speeches  outside  of 
Ohio,  while  at  the  same  time  the  gradually  increasing  effect  of  his 
public  personality  had  stimulated  popular  curiosity  about  him. 
Republican  audiences  wanted  to  hear  him.  For  a  long  time  he 
refused  on  the  ground  that  he  had  too  much  to  do  at  Commit- 
tee headquarters,  but  towards  the  fall  he  began  to  yield.  He 
spoke  once  in  Chicago  about  the  middle  of  September,  once  in 
New  York  ten  days  later,  and  he  made  an  excursion  to  Indiana 
for  the  benefit  of  a  Congressional  candidate,  Mr.  C.  B.  Landis. 
After  he  had  once  yielded  it  became  more  difficult  to  refuse 
other  requests.  The  Committees  of  South  Dakota  and  Nebraska 
were  particularly  clamorous  for  a  short  stumping  tour  which 
should  include  their  states.  After  careful  consideration  Mr. 
Hanna  consented  to  go. 

He  had  several  reasons  for  consenting  to  make  this  particular 
trip.  The  general  situation  was  well  in  hand ;  in  his  opinion 
Republican  success  assured.  When  in  fair  health  he  enjoyed 
stumping,  and  he  looked  forward  to  the  tour  as  an  exhilarating 
vacation  from  the  pressure  of  office  detail.  His  great  object 
throughout  the  campaign  had  been  to  make,  as  we  have  seen, 
conquests  in  the  strong  Bryan  states  west  of  the  Mississippi; 
and  out  of  all  of  this  district  Nebraska  and  South  Dakota  were 
the  two  states  in  which  he  was  working  hardest  to  make  a  good 
showing.  Inasmuch  as  Nebraska  was  Mr.  Bryan's  own  state, 
its  conquest  would  add  a  peculiar  relish  to  the  approaching 
victory.  South  Dakota  was  represented  in  the  Senate  by 
Richard  F.  Pettigrew  —  who  had  been  elected  as  a  Republican 
but  had  bolted  on  the  silver  issue.  Mr.  Hanna  had  a  special 
reason  for  wishing  to  defeat  him,  because  of  the  personal  attack 
which  he  had  made  upon  Mr.  Hanna  in  the  Senate.  The  local 
committee  assured  Mr.  Hanna  that,  if  only  he  would  go  to  South 
Dakota,  he  would  do  more  to  defeat  Pettigrew  than  a  cohort  of 
ordinary  speakers.  So  the  tour  was  arranged.  While  the  proj- 
ect was  under  consideration,  most  of  Mr.  Hanna's  friends  and 
associates  advised  against  it.  Several  members  of  the  National 
Committee  opposed  it  warmly,  and  a  number  of  the  closest 
friends  outside  of  the  Committee  warned  him  that  he  was  mak- 


THE    CAMPAIGN   OF   1900  333 

ing  a  mistake.  They  urged  that  he  was  not  a  professional 
campaigner,  that  his  selection  of  South  Dakota  would  look  like 
the  persecution  of  Mr.  Pettigrew  by  the  most  powerful  man  in 
the  Republican  party  and  would  react  in  that  gentleman's  favor, 
and  that  he  had  better  keep  out  of  the  hot  and  critical  fight 
which  was  being  made  in  those  particular  states. 

After  the  decision  was  made  the  President  himself  decided  to 
interfere.  One  day  the  Postmaster-General,  Mr.  Charles  Emory 
Smith,  turned  up  in  Chicago,  and  sought  an  interview  with  Mr. 
Hanna.  He  began  in  a  somewhat  indirect  way  to  develop  the 
reasons  against  the  proposed  Northwestern  tour,  dwelling  partic- 
ularly on  the  danger  of  personal  violence.  In  pressing  these 
arguments  he  claimed  to  be  expressing  the  opinion  of  several 
other  members  of  the  Cabinet.  But  his  manner  implied  that 
there  was  something  behind  the  protest ;  and  finally  Mr.  Hanna 
became  impatient  and  asked  him  point  blank,  "The  President 
sent  you,  didn't  he  ?  "  When  Mr.  Smith  acknowledged  that  he 
was  an  emissary  of  the  President,  Mr.  Hanna  answered  (accord- 
ing to  an  account  given  immediately  after  the  incident  to  an 
intimate  friend),  "  Ret  urn  to  Washington  and  tell  the  President 
that  God  hates  a  coward," — a  sentence  which  has  a  familiar 
ring,  but  which  the  reader  may  feel  confident  was  not  uttered 
for  the  benefit  of  Mr.  Hanna's  biography. 

Mr.  Hanna  was  exasperated  at  this  interference  with  his  per- 
sonal plans  and  his  management  of  the  campaign.  He  was  a 
quick-tempered  man,  and  under  the  influence  of  high  feeling 
contemplated  courses  of  action  which  his  sober  judgment  could 
not  approve.  In  his  anger  he  even  considered  for  a  moment  the 
sending  in  of  his  resignation ;  but  his  head  was  too  cool  not  to 
prevent  the  commission  of  such  a  mistake.  The  course  on 
which  he  decided  was  to  justify  his  own  judgment  by  making 
his  stumping  tour  a  success. 

His  lively  resentment  is  to  be  explained  partly  on  other  than 
obvious  grounds.  Of  course  he  did  not  like  to  have  his  judg- 
ment impeached  in  relation  to  a  very  important  piece  of  cam- 
paign business.  He  had  decided  upon  the  trip  only  after  con- 
sidering fully  and  patiently  adverse  opinions.  The  decision  for 
or  against  was  a  matter  which  lay  absolutely  within  his  discre- 
tion as  campaign  manager.  But  this  formal  protest  from  Wash- 


334      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND    WORK 

ington  indicated,  not  merely  distrust  of  his  judgment,  but  a  fear 
of  the  impression  which  Mr.  Hanna  would  make  on  his  audiences. 
It  indicated  a  wish  to  keep  his  personality  out  of  the  campaign 
and  away  from  the  people;  and  in  considering  its  meaning 
Mr.  Hanna  could  not  help  connecting  it  with  Mr.  McKinley's 
hesitation  in  asking  him  to  remain  at  the  head  of  the  National 
Committee.  He  and  the  President  expected  opposite  results 
from  his  appearance  on  the  stump.  Nowhere  in  the  country 
had  Mr.  Hanna  been  more  abused  than  by  the  "Populist"  ora- 
tors of  the  Northwest.  He  proposed  by  means  of  the  trip  to 
counteract  the  effect  of  this  abuse,  whereas  the  President 
apparently  feared  that  his  public  appearance  would  confirm 
rather  than  confound  the  diatribes  of  his  enemies.  Manifestly 
Mr.  Hanna  could  not  submit  to  such  a  limitation  of  the  range 
of  his  political  action  without  implicitly  circumscribing  his  own 
subsequent  political  career.  The  question  fundamentally  was 
whether  his  appearance  so  conspicuously  on  the  stump  would 
weaken  the  ticket  or  contribute  to  its  election.  He  believed 
that  he  could  both  set  himself  right  with  the  people  of  the  North- 
west and  make  votes.  It  hurt  and  angered  him  that  so  many 
leading  Republicans,  including  his  old  friend  the  President,  held 
to  the  opposite  opinion.  -  He  determined  to  vindicate  by  the 
results  his  own  judgment,  and  thereby  to  increase  his  own  per- 
sonal political  prestige. 

The  tour  was  carefully  planned.  Instead  of  aiming  directly 
for  South  Dakota  and  Nebraska,  he  made  dates  also  in  Wiscon- 
sin, Minnesota  and  Iowa,  so  that  his  excursions  into  the  states 
on  which  he  particularly  desired  to  exert  influence  would  not 
look  like  a  special  attack  on  any  individual.  It  was  to  occupy 
a  week  all  together,  of  which  two  days  were  spent  in  South 
Dakota.  He  was  accompanied  by  a  considerable  suite.  His 
own  car  contained  the  two  speakers  who  were  to  assist  him  on 
the  stump,  his  old  campaign  comrade,  Senator  William  P.  Frye, 
Mr.  Victor  Dolliver,  brother  of  the  late  Senator  Dolliver  of  Iowa 
and  his  private  secretary,  Mr.  Elmer  Dover.  In  the  newspaper 
car  there  were  representatives  of  the  Associated  Press,  the 
Scripps-McRae  League,  the  Minneapolis  Journal,  the  Chi- 
cago Tribune,  Times-Herald,  Record,  Inter-Ocean,  and  an  official 
stenographer.  The  rest  of  the  train  consisted  of  a  diner,  a 


THE   CAMPAIGN   OF    1900  335 

reception  car  for  the  Committees  and  a  baggage  car.  An  im- 
mense territory  was  covered  in  a  short  time  because  the  train 
was  given  the  right  of  way  over  all  other  trains. 

Senator  Frye  had  prepared  two  speeches,  one  of  which  took 
over  an  hour  to  deliver  and  the  other  about  forty-five  minutes. 
Mr.  Dolliver  also  had  brought  two  speeches  in  his  grip,  one  of 
which  was  very  short  for  breathless  stops  and  the  other  an 
elastic  harangue  which  could  be  stretched  from  fifteen  to  thirty 
minutes.  Wherever  they  spoke  they  made  one  of  their  two 
speeches,  and  after  the  first  day  the  correspondents  ceased  to 
report  them.  Mr.  Hanna  made  seventy-two  speeches,  varying 
between  five  minutes  and  an  hour  hi  length,  and  no  two  of  them 
were  alike. 

Throughout  the  tour  Mr.  Hanna  was  extraordinarily  and  con- 
tinuously successful  in  exciting  popular  interest.  Two  years 
before  President  McKinley  had  visited  South  Dakota,  in  order 
to  welcome  some  soldiers  returning  from  the  Philippines.  He 
had  drawn  the  biggest  crowds  in  the  history  of  the  state.  Mr. 
Hanna's  crowds  were  anywhere  from  about  one  and  one-half 
times  to  twice  as  large  as  Mr.  McKinley's.  They  were  larger 
also  than  those  which  had  greeted  Mr.  Roosevelt  in  the  same 
district  a  few  weeks  earlier.  At  seven  o'clock  in  the  morning 
the  train  would  stop  at  a  station  where  one  could  see  no  more 
than  half  a  dozen  houses,  yet  there  would  be  a  congregation  of 
three  hundred  people  to  hear  Mr.  Hanna  speak.  Farmers  in  the 
neighborhood  had  started  at  midnight  and  had  driven  many 
miles,  in  order  to  be  at  the  station  when  the  train  arrived.  At 
Sioux  Falls,  as  well  as  at  the  larger  places,  a  crowd  three  times 
as  large  as  the  population  of  the  town  gathered  at  the  meeting. 

They  were  all  practically  out-of-door  meetings,  except  those 
held  during  the  evenings  in  the  big  towns.  In  South  Dakota 
the  Populist  Legislature  had  passed  a  law  a  few  years  before 
prohibiting  political  gatherings  which  were  addressed  from  the 
tail-end  of  railway  cars.  Nor  could  such  assemblies  be  held 
within  two  hundred  feet  of  the  railway  track.  The  object  of 
this  discriminating  use  of  the  police  power  was  to  enable  the 
Populist  party  to  campaign  on  even  terms  with  the  Democrats 
and  Republicans.  The  Populists  could  not  afford  the  political 
luxury  of  special  trains.  The  consequence  was  that  the  way- 


336      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

side  meetings  in  South  Dakota  were  all  held  at  some  distance 
from  the  tracks.  The  Committee  would  have  a  carriage  at  the 
station  and  would  drive  the  Senator  to  a  platform,  situated  at 
a  strictly  legal  distance  from  the  tracks,  where  a  local  spell- 
binder would  be  holding  the  crowd  together.  Mr.  Hanna 
would  speak  for  a  few  moments,  the  whistle  would  blow,  cutting 
short  his  eloquence,  and  he  would  be  hurried  back  to  the  train. 

The  crowds  were  not  only  large,  they  were  almost  always 
respectful  and  attentive,  and  they  were  often  enthusiastic.  Of 
course  he  was  interrupted  and  heckled,  but  such  interruptions 
usually  helped  him  with  the  audience.  A  public  speaker  with 
a  bold,  familiar  and  winning  personality  like  Mr.  Hanna's  can 
always  get  the  better  of  a  heckler  —  provided  he  is  not  irritated 
and  disconcerted  by  the  interruption  and  can  make  a  ready  and 
plausible  retort.  Mr.  Hanna  always  gave  his  annoyers  a  fair 
chance,  and  he  was  never  disconcerted,  because  he  was  never 
making  a  set  speech.  He  had  at  his  disposal  a  fund  of  rough 
pleasantry  which,  while  it  often  reads  clumsy  and  even  coarse, 
was  received  with  gusto  by  his  boisterous  audiences. 

A  few  instances  may  be  given  of  the  way  he  met  these  emer- 
gencies. In  one  small  town  he  was  introduced  by  an  abject 
chairman  as  a  "Joshua,  who,  if  he  wanted  to,  could  command 
the  sun  to  stand  still."  To  allow  such  a  silly  adulation  to 
stand  unnoticed  might  be  dangerous.  Mr.  Hanna  in  opening 
his  speech  said  that  the  only  suns  he  would  like  to  command 
would  be  the  sons  of  guns  of  Populists  and  honest  Democrats  to 
vote  for  McKinley.  Its  author  is  not  to  be  congratulated  on  the 
deftness  of  this  sally.  It  is  given  not  because  it  was  happy,  but 
because  it  was  clumsy  yet  effective.  It  at  once  set  him  right 
before  the  audience  as,  not  a  strange  or  remote  animal,  but  as 
one  of  themselves.  All  the  correspondents  agree  that  he  there- 
by captured  the  crowd  and  kept  it  with  him.  He  was  in  a  little 
better  form  at  another  place,  when  in  beginning  his  speech,  he 
said  that  he  was  not  a  politician.  "Mark  Hanna  not  a  politi- 
cian! "  shouted  a  scornful  voice  in  the  audience.  "  No,  I  am  not 
a  politician,  because  I  don't  know  how  to  tell  you  what  is  not 
so" — a  retort  which  also  proved  to  be  a  success  and  enabled 
him  to  go  ahead  with  the  sympathy  of  his  audience. 

At  Auburn  in  Nebraska,  about  2500  people  had  assembled 


THE    CAMPAIGN   OF   1900  337 

around  a  platform,  from  which  Mr.  Hanna  was  speaking.  The 
platform  was  a  flimsy  structure,  and  it  broke  down  under  the 
weight  of  the  men  and  boys  who  were  trying  to  clamber  on  it. 
It  looked  like  a  serious  business,  for  some  fifty  people  had  fallen 
about  six  feet  and  were  struggling  to  free  themselves  from  one 
another  and  from  the  debris.  "Is  Hanna  hurt?"  "How  is 
Hanna?"  shouted  the  spectators;  and  there  was  danger  of  a 
panic.  Just  then  his  body  emerged  from  the  confused  mass; 
there  was  a  twinkle  in  his  eye  and  his  smile  was  broader  than 
usual.  Holding  up  his  hand  to  command  silence,  he  cried: 
"It's  all  right.  No  one  is  hurt.  We  were  just  giving  you  a 
demonstration  of  what  is  going  to  happen  to  the  Democratic 
party.  This  must  have  been  a  Democratic  platform" — at 
which  the  crowd  cheered  vociferously. 

Another  incident  which  proved  to  be  popular  in  the  news- 
papers also  occurred  in  Nebraska.  Just  outside  Weeping 
Water  a  stop  was  made  by  the  engineer  for  the  purpose  of  per- 
mitting Mr.  Hanna  to  shave  before  his  night  meeting  in  Omaha. 
The  photographer  of  the  Omaha  Bee  took  advantage  of  the 
opportunity  to  secure  a  picture  of  Senator  Hanna  and  his  party. 
Just  as  the  Senator  was  about  to  be  photographed  alone,  the 
engineer,  grimy  with  coal  and  grease,  sauntered  up  to  see  what 
was  going  on.  "Here,  you  are  just  the  man  I  want,"  said  Mr. 
Hanna,  grasping  the  engineer  by  the  arm  and  drawing  him  into 
the  field  of  the  lens.  "We  are  both  engineers,  I  run  the  Republi- 
can party  and  you  run  me."  "Well!  I  guess  I've  got  you  faded 
then,  Senator,"  said  the  engineer,  with  a  grin,  as  the  camera 
clicked.  The  picture  of  the  "two  engineers"  was  reproduced 
extensively  at  the  time  and  certainly  enabled  a  good  many  peo- 
ple to  understand  one  of  them  somewhat  better. 

Throughout  the  whole  of  the  tour  he  never  once  mentioned 
Senator  Pettigrew's  name  in  public.  But  although  he  was  dis- 
creet enough  to  avoid  a  personal  attack  on  the  man  against 
whom  he  had  a  personal  grudge,  he  was  far  from  avoiding  all 
personalities.  He  could  not  do  so,  because  his  own  personality 
was  being  made  an  issue,  and  because  the  object  of  the  trip  was 
to  convert  precisely  that  personal  issue  into  a  source  of  strength 
to  the  ticket.  That  he  succeeded  is  indicated  by  the  following 
curious  fact.  One  of  the  peculiarities  of  the  tour  was  the  large 


338      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

number  of  school  children  who  turned  out  to  see  and  hear  him. 
At  Winside  in  Nebraska  this  was  especially  the  case,  in  spite  of 
an  immense  placard  nailed  to  a  telegraph  pole,  which  screamed 
an  awful  warning :  — 

POPULIST  FARMERS, 

BEWARE  !  !  ! 
CHAIN  YOUR  CHILDREN  TO  YOURSELVES 

OR 

PUT  THEM  UNDER  THE  BED. 
MARK  HANNA  IS  IN  TOWN 

In  his  speech  at  Lincoln,  Nebraska,  he  turned  on  Mr.  Bryan. 
The  Democratic  candidate  had  recently  declared  that  the 
Republicans  were  raising  an  enormous  corruption  fund,  with 
which  they  were  going  to  intimidate  laboring  men,  bribe  election 
judges  and  purchase  votes.  This  is  the  way  in  which  Mr. 
Hanna  dealt  with  the  charge.  He  said :  — 

"In  regard  to  that  statement,  which  I  have  just  read,  I  want  to  hurl 
it  back  in  his  teeth  and  tell  him  it  is  as  false  as  hell.  [Applause.]  When 
it  comes  to  personalities  I  am  willing  to  stand  before  the  American 
people  on  my  record  as  a  business  man.  I  have  been  in  business  forty 
years.  I  employ  6000  men,  pay  the  highest  wages,  treat  the  men  like 
men  and  they  all  respect  me.  [Great  applause.]  When  Bryan  or 
any  other  man  charges  me  in  that  way  —  and  I  am  willing  to  ap- 
propriate it  all  as  Chairman  of  the  board  of  managers  of  the  Republican 
campaign  —  I  promise  as  I  said  to  hurl  it  back  and  denounce  him  as  a 
demagog  in  his  own  town.  [Great  applause.]  [Continued  cheering.] 
[Voice:  'Hit  him  again.']" 

He  went  on  to  say :  — 

"In  1897,  when  I  had  a  little  singing  school  down  in  Ohio, 
Bryan  came  down  there  to  help  Johnnie  McLean  defeat  me  for 
the  Senate.  He  went  across  the  state,  back  and  forth  from  one  end  to 
the  other  and  through  the  mining  districts,  and  he  told  the  people  of 
Ohio  what  a  bad  man  I  was.  He  told  the  men  working  in  the  mines 
that  Hanna  was  a  labor  crusher.  He  forgot  that  they  knew  that  I  was 
born  and  always  lived  in  that  state,  and  that  my  record  with  organized 
labor  was  better  than  any  other  man's  in  that  state  [applause],  because 
I  was  the  first  employer  that  I  know  of  in  the  state  of  Ohio  that  ever 
recognized  and  treated  with  organized  labor.  I  have  done  it  from  that 
day  to  this.  [Applause.] 


THE   CAMPAIGN  OF   1900  339 

"  Now  I  am  entitled  to  tell  another  story  of  justification  in  Mr. 
Bryan's  town.  [Voice:  'Tell  it  to  them.']  At  the  close  of  that  cam- 
paign I  was  at  Cincinnati.  The  meeting  was  in  the  great  music 
hall  as  full  as  this  theatre  from  top  to  bottom,  —  a  very  intelli- 
gent and  appreciative  audience,  I  thought,  right  under  the  shadow 
of  the  Cincinnati  Inquirer,  who  had  lied  like  a  thief  about  me  every 
day  in  the  week  and  kept  that  Davenport  cartoon  on  the  front  page 
of  its  paper.  I  was  pictured  as  a  bogie  man.  That  was  intended  to 
frighten  the  workingmen  away  from  supporting  the  members  of  the 
legislature  that  they  knew  would  vote  to  send  me  back  to  the  Senate. 
Bryan  had  done  his  work  and  left  the  state,  and  that  was  the  last  night 
in  the  campaign,  and  I  thought  I  would  make  a  little  statement  there 
for  the  benefit  of  those  fellows.  So  I  said:  'Now,  gentlemen,  this 
campaign  is  over.  As  far  as  my  appearance  before  the  public  is  concerned 
it  is  closed,  but  I  want  to  make  one  proposition  not  only  to  the  people 
of  Ohio,  but  to  the  people  of  the  United  States.  Mr.  Bryan,  who  once 
aspired  to  be  President  of  the  United  States,  came  to  Ohio  this  fall  to 
tell  the  people  in  my  own  state,  who  had  known  me  since  I  was  a  boy, 
that  I  was  a  bad,  wicked  man,  and  that  I  was  a  labor  crusher,  which  was 
worse  than  all.  Now  I  want  to  make  this  proposition.  If  any  man  who 
ever  worked  for  me  in  any  capacity  can  truthfully  say  that  I  have  ever 
knowingly  done  him  a  wrong  or  an  injustice ;  that  I  have  failed  to  pay 
the  highest  rate  of  wages ;  that  I  have  ever  refused  to  receive  in  my 
presence  either  individually  or  by  committee  any  man  in  my  employ, 
whether  members  of  the  union  or  not ;  that  I  have  ever  questioned  a 
man  when  employing  him  whether  he  belonged  to  a  union  or  not,  or 
discharged  him  because  he  belonged  to  an  organization  or  union ;  if 
that  can  be  brought  to  me  and  proved,  I  will  resign  as  Senator  to- 
morrow. '  [Applause.] " 

The  speeches  made  by  Mr.  Hanna  during  this  Northwestern 
trip  constituted  a  serious  and  an  honest  contribution  to  a  dis- 
cussion of  the  issues  of  the  campaign.  Taken  as  a  whole  they 
contain  the  best  and  most  comprehensive  statement  which  he 
ever  made  of  his  own  personal  attitude  towards  the  political  and 
economic  problems  of  the  day.  He  addressed  his  audiences  in 
a  tone  of  earnest  conviction,  and  he  argued  his  case  before  them 
candidly  and  instructively.  He  had  none  of  the  tricks  of  the 
ordinary  stump  speaker,  and  none  of  the  insincerity  and  obliq- 
uity of  the  ordinary  partisan  advocate.  He  reasoned  with  his 
hearers  and  tried  to  persuade  them  to  vote  the  Republican 


340      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

ticket  on  what  seemed  to  him  absolutely  sufficient  grounds. 
When  he  told  one  audience  that  he  was  not  a  politician,  because 
he  did  not  know  how  to  tell  them  what  was  not  so,  he  was  speak- 
ing the  truth.  His  hearers  went  away  with  the  impression  that 
he  was  speaking  the  truth ;  and  this  fact,  taken  together  with 
his  big,  imposing,  yet  engaging  personality,  accounts  for  his 
success. 

That  the  tour  was  a  success  from  every  point  of  view,  all 
accounts  are  agreed.  The  results  vindicated  his  judgment. 
The  campaign  in  the  Northwest  obtained  as  a  consequence  a 
greatly  increased  momentum,  which  did  much  to  excite  con- 
tagious confidence  and  enthusiasm  among  the  Republicans  in 
the  neighboring  states.  By  his  personal  appearance  on  the 
stump  he  had  really  helped  the  ticket,  and  he  had  placed  his 
own  personality  in  a  much  more  favorable  light  among  an  im- 
portant section  of  the  American  people.  Indeed,  this  trip,  more 
than  any  other  single  cause,  helped  to  make  Mr.  Hanna  person- 
ally popular  throughout  the  West,  just  as  his  first  stumping  tour 
in  Ohio  had  made  him  personally  popular  in  his  own  state.  As 
soon  as  he  became  known,  the  virulence  and  malignity  with 
which  he  had  been  abused  reacted  in  his  favor.  When  he  ap- 
peared on  the  platform,  the  crowd,  instead  of  seeing  a  monster, 
found  him  to  be  just  the  kind  of  a  man  whom  Americans  best 
understand  and  most  heartily  like.  He  was  not  separated  from 
them  by  differences  of  standards  and  tastes  or  by  any  intellect- 
ual or  professional  sophistication.  The  roughness  of  much  of 
his  public  speaking,  and  its  lack  of  form,  which  makes  it  compara- 
tively poor  reading,  was  an  essential  part  of  its  actual  success. 
He  stamped  himself  on  his  speeches  just  as  he  had  stamped 
himself  on  his  business.  His  audiences  had  to  pass  judgment 
on  the  man  more  than  on  the  message,  and  the  man  could  not 
but  look  good  to  them. 

When  he  returned  to  Chicago  the  campaign  was  virtually  over. 
Only  a  little  over  a  week  remained,  and  during  that  time  there 
was  nothing  to  be  done  but  to  gather  the  fruits  of  four  months 
of  preparation.  During  the  final  weeks  the  different  lines  of 
work  came  to  a  head  precisely  as  planned.  There  were  no  mis- 
givings at  Republican  headquarters,  and  the  rank  and  file  of  the 
party  were  made  to  feel  equally  confident.  The  enthusiasm  was 


THE   CAMPAIGN   OF   1900  341 

not  as  great  as  it  had  been  during  the  final  week  of  the  previous 
campaign,  but  it  did  not  need  to  be  as  great.  They  had  been 
able  to  conduct  an  aggressive  campaign  from  a  defensive  posi- 
tion, not  only  because  their  defences  were  strong,  and  their 
resources  in  men  and  money  were  large,  but  because  the  attack 
upon  them  never  developed  much  impetus.  The  American 
people  were  expansionist  in  their  general  attitude,  and  they  were 
willing  to  incur  the  risks  and  pay  the  expenses  of  a  policy  of 
national  expansion.  They  were  also  satisfied  with  the  prospects 
of  continued  prosperity,  which  the  reelection  of  Mr.  McKinley 
guaranteed;  and  they  were  willing  to  believe  that  prosperity 
with  the  trusts  was  better  than  famine  without  them.  So  the 
Republicans  won  their  most  overwhelming  victory  since  1872. 
McKinley  and  Roosevelt  obtained  a  plurality  of  832,000  over 
Bryan  and  a  clear  majority  of  443,000  in  a  total  popular  vote  of 
almost  14,000,000.  In  the  North  Bryan  carried  only  the  mining 
states  of  Colorado,  Idaho,  Montana  and  Nevada.  In  South 
Dakota  Richard  F.  Pettigrew  lost  his  seat  in  the  Senate  and  was 
replaced  by  a  Republican.  Bryan  was  beaten  in  his  own  state. 
The  Populist  agitation,  which  had  so  long  dominated  the  agri- 
cultural states  west  of  the  Mississippi  River,  was  done  to  death. 
The  Democrats  were  so  weakened  and  discredited  that  they 
ceased  for  the  time  being  to  constitute  even  an  effective  opposi- 
tion. The  Republicans  had  received  a  clear  mandate  to  govern 
the  country  in  the  interest  of  business  expansion. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

SHIP   SUBSIDIES 

THE  triumphant  reelection  of  President  McKinley  consoli- 
dated the  work  with  which  the  political  leadership  of  Mark 
Hanna  was  peculiarly,  if  not  exclusively,  associated.  For  the 
first  time  since  Mr.  Cleveland  made  a  serious  attack  upon  the 
protective  tariff  in  1887,  the  business  of  the  country  was  in  all 
its  branches  guaranteed  at  least  for  a  time  against  the  discon- 
certing effects  of  inimical  political  agitation.  The  election  of 
1896  had  not  completely  restored  confidence,  because  his  previous 
misfortunes  had  unstrung  the  nerves  of  the  average  business  man, 
and  because,  after  the  Spanish  War  was  over  and  business  began 
to  revive,  there  loomed  up  in  the  near  future  another  disconcert- 
ing election.  Not  until  that  contest  was  favorably  decided  could 
confidence  be  entirely  restored.  So  much  hinged  upon  the 
result  that  as  the  first  of  November  approached,  business  men 
became  more  rather  than  less  hesitant  and  apprehensive. 
Their  relief  was  correspondingly  great  when  the  Republican 
victory  proved  to  be  comprehensive  and  decisive.  All  hesita- 
tion at  once  vanished,  and  there  began  a  period  of  unprecedented 
business  expansion. 

Mark  Hanna  had  labored  to  bring  about  this  result ;  and  his 
own  personal  prestige  was  substantially  enhanced  by  its  appear- 
ance. After  the  election  he  began  to  exercise  an  amount  and 
a  kind  of  political  power  which  has  no  parallel  in  American  his- 
tory. The  group  of  causes  which,  after  his  appointment  to  the 
Senate,  had  limited  his  activity  and  made  his  influence  at 
Washington  somewhat  subterranean,  had  lost  their  force.  The 
Spanish  War  was  over.  The  attention  of  the  country  was  to 
be  fastened  for  some  time  on  his  own  favorite  subject  of  political 
economics.  He  had  passed  through  his  apprenticeship  as  Sena- 
tor. He  had  won  the  confidence  of  almost  all  his  colleagues  in 
the  Senate  and  the  warm  affection  of  many  of  them.  He  was 

342 


SHIP   SUBSIDIES  343 

thoroughly  established  as  one  of  the  steering  committee  of  the 
Upper  House.  His  successful  stumping  tour  during  the  cam- 
paign had  increased  the  area  of  his  personal  popularity  with  the 
American  people.  At  the  same  time  none  of  the  former  in- 
gredients of  his  effective  power  had  suffered  any  diminution. 
In  spite  of  his  disagreements  with  Mr.  McKinley  before  and 
during  the  campaign,  their  relations  were  never  more  close  and 
confidential  than  they  were  during  the  early  months  of  1901. 
And,  of  course,  the  reelection  of  Mr.  McKinley  decidedly  in- 
creased his  influence  both  with  the  leading  business  men  of  the 
country  and  with  the  local  leaders  of  the  Republican  party. 

Mr.  Hanna  exercised  his  power  so  discreetly  that  it  rarely 
became  a  matter  of  public  comment  or  protest;  but  occasion- 
ally some  evidence  or  expression  of  it  slipped  out.  One  such 
incident  occurred  during  the  short  session  preceding  Mr. 
McKinley's  second  inauguration.  Certain  Democratic  Senators 
were  pressing  the  passage  of  a  bill  providing  for  the  immediate 
construction  of  a  canal  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific  by  the 
Nicaraguan  route,  but  they  could  accomplish  nothing,  because 
the  Republican  leaders  were  not  ready  to  act  on  the  matter, 
until  pending  negotiations  with  Great  Britain  for  the  abrogation 
of  the  Clayton-Bulwer  Treaty  were  concluded.  In  the  midst 
of  the  discussion,  Senator  Clay  of  Georgia  made  the  following 
appeal  to  Mr.  Hanna,  which  reads  curiously  in  the  light  of  the 
latter's  subsequent  activity  in  relation  to  an  interoceanic  canal. 

"I  appeal,"  said  Senator  Clay,  "to  the  National  Chairman 
of  the  party  in  power  to  come  to  the  support  of  the  bill  providing 
for  the  construction  of  this  waterway.  Does  the  distinguished 
Senator  from  Ohio  recognize  that  this  great  waterway  is  of  more 
importance  to  the  people  of  the  United  States  and  to  American 
commerce  than  his  ship-subsidy  scheme  ?  I  appeal  to  the  Sena- 
tor from  Ohio  because  I  know  the  influence  which  he  exerts 
among  his  party  associates.  I  realize  that  a  word  from  him 
would  mean  success  to  this  great  enterprise.  We  all  know  that 
he  largely  shapes  and  molds  the  policy  of  his  party.  We  know 
the  influence  he  has  exerted  in  keeping  before  the  Senate  this 
ship-subsidy  scheme,  which  has  consumed  so  much  of  the  time 
of  the  Senate." 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  add  that  this  somewhat  naive  sup- 


344      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

plication  failed  to  move  the  hard  heart  of  Mr.  Hanna ;  but  the 
Senator  from  Georgia  was  a  true  prophet  in  asserting  that  a 
word — albeit  a  long  word — from  Mr.  Hanna  would  eventually 
have  much  to  do  with  the  success  of  an  interoceanic  canal. 

If  Mr.  Hanna  made  no  response  to  the  appeal  of  the  Sena- 
tor from  Georgia,  it  was  not  because  he  repudiated  some  measure 
of  responsibility  for  the  passage  of  a  legislative  program.  His 
position,  indeed,  demanded  that  he  should  do  what  he  could  to 
carry  out  the  promises  of  his  party  in  the  matter  of  legislation, 
and  the  position  of  the  party  itself  made  the  redemption  of  such 
promises  more  than  ever  important.  Never  since  the  recon- 
structed Southern  States  renewed  their  representation  in  Con- 
gress had  the  Republican  control  over  all  the  departments  of 
government  been  so  complete  and  so  secure.  Never,  apparently, 
had  the  party  been  so  thoroughly  united  on  all  questions  of 
public  policy.  Never  had  it  possessed  such  general  confidence 
in  the  ability  and  good  faith  of  its  leadership.  If  partisan 
responsibility  amounted  to  anything  at  all,  an  energetic  effort 
must  be  made  to  pass  the  legislation  to  which  the  party  was 
pledged.  Mr.  Hanna's  complex  position  as  the  Congressional 
representative  of  the  President,  as  Chairman  of  the  National 
Committee  and  as  one  of  the  most  prominent  Senators  made  it 
inevitable  that  he  should  play  a  leading  part  in  redeeming  such 
pledges. 

The  only  kind  of  legislation  in  which  Mr.  Hanna  could  take 
any  lively  personal  interest  would  necessarily  have  for  its  object 
the  promotion  of  business  activity.  That  was  the  cause  with 
which  his  personal  political  career  was  identified,  and  on  behalf 
of  which  the  Republicans  had  assumed  and  retained  power. 
For  the  most  part  all  that  business  needed  in  order  to  become 
more  prosperous  was  to  be  let  alone.  Existing  legislation  both 
national  and  state  was  encouraging  it  in  almost  every  possible 
way.  But  there  was  one  branch  of  American  industry  and 
commerce,  which  was  far  from  prosperous,  and  which  assuredly 
needed  some  additional  protection  on  the  part  of  such  a  solici- 
tous government.  The  American  merchant  marine  engaged  in 
foreign  trade  was  notoriously  decrepit.  Over  nine-tenths  of  the 
imports  and  exports  of  the  country  were  carried  in  vessels 
which  were  not  built  in  American  shipyards,  which  did  not 


MR.  HANNA  IN  1901 


SHIP   SUBSIDIES  345 

employ  American  labor,  and  the  foreign  owners  of  which  col- 
lected their  tolls  from  American  merchants.  In  the  absence  of 
some  additional  legislation  this  condition  was  likely  to  become 
worse  rather  than  better,  because  the  American  either  as  ship- 
builder or  operator  could  not  compete  on  equal  terms  with  for- 
eigners, and  particularly  with  Englishmen  and  Germans.  Un- 
less the  government  gave  to  him  the  same  kind  of  assistance 
that  it  gave  to. the  other  branches  of  American  industry,  the 
American  merchant  marine  would  continue  to  stagnate. 

As  early  as  1888  the  problem  of  re-creating  an  American  mer- 
chant marine  had  been  considered  by  the  Republican  leaders. 
The  subsequent  platforms  of  the  party  had  declared  in  favor 
of  some  effective  means  of  restoring  the  American  flag  to  the 
high  seas.  But  throughout  the  whole  of  this  period  legislation 
in  regard  to  the  matter  was  not  seriously  pressed,  because  other 
issues  had  forced  themselves  to  the  front.  Now,  however,  that 
the  Republicans  were  in  full  control,  and  were  free  to  deal  with 
domestic  economic  problems,  it  was  inevitable  that  the  matter 
should  come  up  for  insistent  consideration.  They  could  not 
have  avoided  the  attempt  to  pass  some  kind  of  a  bill,  even  if 
Mr.  Hanna  had  not  been  on  hand  to  urge  them  on;  and  Mr. 
Hanna's  personal  influence  made  the  attempt  the  more  unavoid- 
able and  the  more  energetic. 

Ever  since  Mr.  Hanna  had  entered  public  life  he  had  been 
interested  in  the  revival  of  the  American  merchant  marine  as  he 
had  been  in  no  other  economic  policy.  His  own  business  career 
had  been  continuously  connected  with  the  building  and  opera- 
tion of  ships,  so  that  he  brought  to  the  subject  a  prolonged  and 
instructive  personal  experience.  When  he  entered  the  Senate 
he  was  appointed  to  the  Committee  on  Commerce,  partly  be- 
cause he  wanted  to  have  a  hand  in  the  work  of  framing  the 
legislation  the  passage  of  which  had  already  been  approved  by 
the  party  leaders.  The  one  important  measure  which  he  per- 
sonally introduced  was  the  original  Hanna-Frye  Subsidy  Bill 
of  1898.  It  could  not  be  pressed  at  that  time,  but  he  frequently 
discussed  the  necessity  of  such  legislation  in  his  speeches  on  the 
stump.  He  was  doing  his  best  to  create  a  more  vigorous  public 
opinion  in  its  favor  throughout  the  Middle  West.  That  part 
of  the  country  had  never  been  much  interested  in  the  restora- 


346      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

tion  of  the  American  flag  to  the  high  seas,  and  it  was  not  easy 
to  make  its  audiences  listen  to  arguments  in  favor  of  the  desired 
legislation.  But  the  fact  that  he  was  risking  his  popularity 
in  keeping  the  subject  before  his  constituents  did  not  deter  him. 
His  private  secretary,  Mr.  Elmer  Dover,  states  that  ship 
subsidies  were  the  one  subject  which  he  persisted  in  preaching, 
even  when  he  was  boring  his  audiences  and  knewjthat  he  was 
boring  them. 

His  lively  and  insistent  interest  in  ship-subsidy  legislation 
was  not,  however,  due  merely  to  liis  own  personal  participation 
hi  the  upbuilding  of  American  fresh-water  shipping.  The 
subject  made  a  strong  appeal  to  him  as  a  matter  of  national 
policy.  Mr.  Hanna  had  a  sound  and  comprehensive  under- 
standing of  the  principles  underlying  American  economic 
legislation.  He  saw  that  every  branch  of  American  industry, 
agriculture  and  domestic  commerce  rested  more  or  less  on  encour- 
agement by  the  government,  and  that  such  encouragement  was 
granted  on  the  assumption  that  the  public  economic  interest 
was  most  effectually  promoted  by  the  stimulation  of  private 
enterprise.  On  this  basis  a  national  economic  system  had  been 
created,  the  several  parts  of  which  were  closely  connected,  and 
which  with  one  exception  included  every  essential  economic 
activity.  The  one  exception  was  that  of  American  shipping 
engaged  in  foreign  trade.  He  never  could  understand  either 
why  this  exception  had  been  allowed  to  occur  or  why  it  was  not 
immediately  remedied.  It  was  to  him  incomprehensible  that 
such  an  opportunity  of  employing  American  capital  and  labor 
should  be  neglected,  and  that  the  builders  and  possible  opera- 
tors of  ocean-going  ships  should  not  be  granted  the  same  en- 
couragement as  that  which  every  other  essential  American  eco- 
nomic activity  had  obtained  in  one  form  or  another. 

In  the  winter  of  1900  and  1901  certain  recent  developments 
in  the  character  of  American  exports  gave  peculiar  pertinence 
to  legislation  in  aid  of  American  shipping.  It  was  just  at  this 
moment  that  American  manufacturers,  particularly  of  metal 
products,  had  begun  a  very  successful  invasion  of  the  foreign 
markets.  The  exports  of  manufactured  articles  had  increased 
suddenly  and  enormously.  The  prevailing  opinion  was  that 
certain  of  them  had  outgrown  the  home  market,  that  their  pro- 


SHIP   SUBSIDIES  347 

ductive  capacity  was  far  in  excess  of  domestic  consumption 
and  that  better  arrangements  must  be  made  to  introduce 
American  products  abroad.  The  grouping  of  many  manufac- 
turing plants  under  one  ownership  and  management  was  ex- 
plained and  defended  as  a  necessary  step  in  the  development  of 
American  export  trade.  It  was  claimed  that  the  government 
could  contribute  substantially  to  the  better  organization  of  the 
export  trade  by  subsidizing  American  marine  carriers.  From 
this  point  of  view,  ship-subsidy  legislation  became  an  essential 
part  of  a  really  efficient  national  economic  organization.  A 
government  which  had  encouraged  American  manufacturers, 
when  they  were  occupied  in  selling  almost  exclusively  to  the 
home  market,  should  be  all  the  more  ready  to  supply  them 
with  an  economic  agency  which  would  help  them  to  make  their 
profits  out  of  foreigners. 

The  decision  was  reached,  consequently,  to  tackle  seriously 
the  question  of  subsidy  legislation  during  the  short  session 
which  began  on  Dec.  1,  1900,  and  this  decision  was  at- 
tributed chiefly  to  Mr.  Hanna.  For  the  first  time  his  leadership 
became  a  conspicuous  fact  in  the  conduct  of  the  Senate's  busi- 
ness. He  was  not  in  actual  charge  of  the  measure  on  the  floor 
of  the  Senate.  That  duty  devolved  upon  Senator  Frye,  who 
was  Chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Commerce.  But  he  was 
none  the  less  more  responsible  for  the  legislative  career  of  the 
bill  than  was  its  floor  manager.  In  Senator's  Frye  absence 
he  assumed  charge  of  the  measure.  He  frequently  intervened 
in  the  debate,  which  occupied  a  large  part  of  the  Senate's  time 
from  Dec.  4,  1900,  to  Feb.  18,  1901.  On  December  13  he 
made  on  behalf  of  the  bill  the  first  long  speech  of  his  career 
as  Senator — a  speech  which  was  generally  acknowledged  to  be 
a  credit  to  its  author  and  a  very  able  presentation  of  his  side 
of  the  case.  At  the  same  time  he  was  actively  canvassing  among 
his  colleagues,  in  order  to  find  out  how  they  would  vote ;  and  he 
was  using  his  influence  all  over  the  country  to  create  a  more 
widespread  public  opinion  in  favor  of  the  proposed  legislation. 

Notwithstanding  the  apparently  vigorous  attempt  made  to 
pass  a  subsidy  bill  during  the  short  session,  it  is  improbable 
that  its  advocates  really  intended  to  do  more  than  concentrate 
public  attention  on  their  legislative  enterprise.  Even  if  they 


348      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS    LIFE    AND    WORK 

could  have  brought  the  bill  to  a  vote  in  the  Senate,  there  was 
no  time  to  force  it  through  the  House  in  the  last  weeks  of 
a  Congressional  session.  As  a  matter  of  fact  they  were  power- 
less even  to  secure  a  vote  on  it  in  the  Senate.  The  opposition 
of  the  Democrats  was  furious  and  determined.  They  had  de- 
cided that  it  should  not  be  voted  upon  at  that  session,  and 
the  rules  of  the  Senate  permitted  them  to  discuss  the  measure 
at  sufficient  length  to  kill  it.  The  Republican  leaders  must 
have  realized  their  powerlessness.  In  pressing  the  bill  they 
must  have  been  making  a  demonstration  in  force,  preparatory 
to  a  better  sustained  movement  under  the  more  favorable 
conditions  of  the  ensuing  long  session. 

Just  as  soon  as  the  fifty-seventh  Congress  assembled  on 
Dec.  1,  1901,  a  renewed  attempt  was  made  in  the  Senate  to 
pass  a  subsidy  bill  differing  in  certain  essential  respects  from 
the  former  measure.  Its  discussion  was  begun  on  March  3, 
1902,  and  it  occupied  the  entire  time  of  the  Senate  until  March 
17,  when  a  vote  was  obtained.  During  this  second  debate  Mr. 
Hanna  played,  if  anything,  an  even  more  important  part  than 
he  had  the  year  before.  He  did  not,  indeed,  make  any  long 
set  speech  on  behalf  of  the  bill,  but  he  made  a  number  of  extem- 
poraneous statements  in  reference  to  particular  phases  of  the 
discussion;  and  superficially  he  was  more  interested  in  the 
measure  and  more  responsible  for  it  than  was  the  Chairman 
of  the  Committee. 

The  vote  taken  on  March  17  was  favorable  to  the  bill.  There 
were  forty-two  Senators  recorded  in  its  favor  and  only  thirty- 
two  in  opposition  —  its  opponents  including  four  such  good 
Republicans  as  Senators  Spooner,  Allison,  Dolliver  and  Proc- 
tor. It  was  then  sent  to  the  House,  but  although  the  session 
was  still  young,  it  was  never  voted  on  by  that  body.  The 
attempt  to  stimulate  the  building  and  operation  of  American 
ships  in  foreign  trade  consequently  failed ;  and  its  failure  under 
the  circumstances  must  have  been  due  to  the  influence  of  very 
powerful  opposing  currents  of  public  opinion.  At  a  period 
when  the  Republican  party  was  in  full  control  of  the  govern- 
ment and  was  powerfully  organized  for  united  action,  its  most 
prominent  leaders  were  unable  to  secure  the  acceptance  of  a 
measure  which,  whatever  its  faults,  was  an  honest  and  care- 


SHIP   SUBSIDIES  349 

fully  considered  attempt  to  meet  an  apparent  public  need  and 
redeem  a  party  pledge.  The  failure  was,  moreover,  not  due 
to  the  Democratic  minority,  which  had  far  less  power  under 
the  rules  of  the  House  than  it  had  under  the  rules  of  the  Senate. 
It  was  due  chiefly  to  the  impossibility  of  creating  much  interest 
in  the  object  of  the  bill  among  Middle  Western  Republicans. 
They  failed  to  see  how  the  interests  of  their  constituents  would 
be  helped  by  subsidy  legislation;  and  in  the  absence  of  any 
local  benefit  they  did  not  want  to  incur  the  unpopularity  which 
might  result  from  the  actual  appropriation  of  national  funds 
for  the  benefit  of  a  particular  industry. 

If  the  attempt  to  pass  the  bill  had  been  successful,  I  should 
have  been  obliged  to  consider  in  detail  its  provisions,  its  merits 
and  its  consequences.  But  the  ultimate  failure  of  the  attempt 
makes  it  unnecessary  to  discuss  the  measure,  except  in  relation 
to  the  motives  and  ideas  which  induced  Mr.  Hanna  so  enthu- 
siastically and  tenaciously  to  favor  it.  Why  he  attached  so 
much  importance  to  it  has  already  been  indicated  in  a  general 
way ;  but  it  is  desirable  to  explain  somewhat  more  in  detail  and 
partly  hi  his  own  words  his  personal  attitude  towards  the 
matter.  Its  importance  in  his  eyes  will  seem  either  blind  or  sin- 
ister to  people  who  object  on  principle  to  any  attempt  at  the  pro- 
motion of  a  public  interest  by  the  subsidizing  and  encouragement 
of  private  interests.  But  Mr.  Hanna  never  addressed  his  argu- 
ments to  people  of  such  opinions.  The  system  to  which  he  had 
been  accustomed  all  his  life,  and  which  determined  all  his  own  eco- 
nomic ideas  was  one  which  had  identified  the  public  interest  with 
the  encouragement  of  every  phase  of  private  productive  enter- 
prise. It  had  deliberately  sought  to  bestow  upon  the  farmers, 
the  manufacturers,  the  miners,  the  cattlemen,  the  timbermen, 
the  railroads  and  corporations  of  all  kinds  direct  or  indirect 
subsidies.  Such  had  been  the  national  economic  policy  since 
the  Civil  War.  It  was  the  system  actually  in  existence,  and 
it  seemed  to  him  really  national  in  its  scope,  in  its  meaning 
and  in  the  distribution  of  its  benefits. 

He  is  continually  arguing  that  the  adoption  of  some  measure 
which  would  restore  American  shipping  to  the  high  seas  is  a 
necessary  part  of  this  national  economic  policy.  Considering 
the  protection  which  the  government  extended  to  other  in- 


350      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

dustries,  it  was  unjust  as  well  as  unwise  that  similar  encourage- 
ment should  be  denied  to  American  shipping  engaged  in  foreign 
trade ;  and  there  were  many  ways  in  which  the  national  eco- 
nomic interests  were  really  endangered  thereby.  A  war  be- 
tween Germany  and  England  might  work  upon  the  large  per- 
centage of  our  foreign  commerce  carried  under  the  flags  of 
those  powers,  a  serious  injury  which  the  government  of  the 
United  States  would  be  powerless  to  avert.  The  efficiency  of 
the  American  navy  and  its  supplies  of  men  and  auxiliary  ships 
depended  on  the  existence  of  a  flourishing  merchant  marine. 
In  these  and  other  similar  respects  the  encouragement  of  Ameri- 
can shipping  was  merely  a  political  precaution  demanded  by 
the  necessities  of  general  national  policy;  but  it  was  equally 
demanded  by  the  prevailing  conditions  of  international  com- 
mercial warfare.  All  the  other  great  trading  nations  had  built 
up  a  merchant  marine  partly  for  the  sake  of  stimulating  their 
export  trade.  American  merchants  and  manufacturers  were 
hampered  by  the  lack  of  such  an  engine,  and  the  benefit  of 
supplying  the  need  would  be  out  of  all  proportion  to  its  actual 
cost. 

"The  whole  question,"  he  wrote  in  an  article  in  the  National 
Magazine  for  January,  1901,  " resolves  itself  into  this:  If  the 
American  people  can  be  brought  to  understand  the  need  and 
value  of  an  American  mercantile  mar  ne  to  the  nation,  they 
will  support  a  bill  which  makes  provisions  for  just  such  an 
accomplishment.  The  benefit  aimed  at  is  for  the  nation.  To 
secure  that  benefit  for  the  nation,  incidentally  certain  individ- 
uals —  those  willing  to  risk  their  capital  in  American-built  ships 
in  our  foreign  trade  —  will  be  safeguarded  against  loss  in  com- 
petition with  foreign  ships.  This  result,  it  cannot  be  said  too 
emphatically,  will  utterly  fail  of  accomplishment  unless  a  very 
substantial  reduction  is  brought  about  in  the  rates  of  freight 
charged  for  the  carriage  of  our  exports  and  imports,  because 
only  by  reducing  rates  can  American  ships  expect  to  wrest  any 
of  the  business  from  their  foreign  competitors.  The  reduction 
in  rates  will,  it  is  believed,  several  times  repay  the  American 
people  for  whatever  expenditure  the  government  may  make 
directly  to  the  beneficiaries  of  the  bill."  Again  in  his  speech 
in  favor  of  the  bill,  delivered  on  Dec.  13,  1900,  he  said: 


SHIP   SUBSIDIES  351 

"This  question  is  broader  than  can  be  written  in  the  lines  of 
the  bill.  It  will  be  widespread  in  its  benefits.  It  is  not  aimed 
at  any  class  or  any  particular  industry.  It  is  one  of  those 
measures  whose  influence  will  permeate  every  industry  and 
every  class  in  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  United  States. 
When  I  am  told  that  the  people  of  the  interior  of  this  country 
are  not  interested  in  the  shipping  question,  I  say  it  is  not  true 
in  fact.  Every  man,  no  matter  what  his  vocation  in  life,  is 
interested  and  will  be  benefited  directly  or  indirectly,  because 
you  cannot  create  an  industry  like  this,  requiring  first  the  de- 
velopment of  our  raw  materials  and  then  the  construction  of 
ships  which  open  up  the  markets  of  the  world  and  give  greater 
opportunities  to  our  merchants  and  manufacturers,  without 
benefiting  every  industry  and  every  line  of  business." 

These  words  of  Senator  Banna's  were  uttered  in  absolute 
good  faith.  He  sincerely  believed  that  in  promoting  legisla- 
tion which  in  his  opinion  would  restore  the  American  flag  to 
the  high  seas,  he  was  making  an  essential  contribution  to  a 
constructive  national  business  policy.  He  could  not  under- 
stand why  so  many  Republicans  who  were  willing  to  subsidize 
manufacturers  with  high  protective  rates  should  shrink  from 
granting  to  the  shipping  industry  similar  encouragement.  He 
himself  knew  that  there  was  no  essential  difference  between 
paying  the  money  directly  out  of  the  Treasury  and  collecting 
it  indirectly  from  the  consumers  —  except  perhaps  that  the 
second  method  was  more  costly.  Yet  certain  Republicans 
and  protectionist  Democrats  talked  as  if  the  two  cases  were 
different,  and  as  if  the  only  object  of  the  ship-subsidy  bill  was 
to  make  a  gift  of  the  people's  money  to  a  group  of  wealthy  men 
interested  in  ocean  transportation.  An  accusation  of  this  kind 
was  continually  being  flung  at  his  head  by  the  Democrats. 
These  charges  of  bad  faith  and  equivocal  motives  aroused  in 
Mr.  Hanna  an  honest  indignation,  and  on  one  occasion,  Feb. 
15,  1901,  he  answered  the  taunts  with  dignity  and  self- 
restraint.  I  quote  his  short  speech  on  that  occasion  almost 
in  full: - 

"Mr.  President,  I  have  listened  patiently  for  days  to  this  discussion, 
and  have  listened  with  astonishment  to  many  of  the  reckless  state- 
ments which  have  been  made  by  the  opponents  of  this  bill,  state- 


352      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

ments  which  cannot  be  borne  out  by  facts  and  which  are  intended  to 
place  before  the  country  a  misconception  of  the  merits  of  this  measure. 
I  have  known  perfectly  well  of  the  intended  opposition  to  defeat 
the  measure.  I  have  heard  insinuations  with  reference  to  men  who 
have  been  connected  with  the  measure  in  this  body  and  out  of  it 
which  made  me  blush,  and  I  resent  them.  I  have  heard  the  scolding 
from  our  friend  from  Colorado  [Mr.  Teller].  But,  Mr.  President,  we 
are  not  children.  We  believe  when  we  present  a  measure  on  the  floor  of 
this  Senate  and  advocate  it,  whether  as  a  Republican  measure  or  simply 
as  a  public  measure,  that  we  are  entitled  at  least  to  be  considered  as 
honest  in  our  purpose.  From  the  time  that  this  bill  was  introduced 
until  this  hour  the  effort  I  have  made  to  secure  its  enactment  into 
law  has  been  for  the  purpose  of  accomplishing  what  it  has  been  stated 
it  would  accomplish  —  to  upbuild  the  merchant  marine  of  the  United 
States  and  to  better  the  conditions  of  the  people. 

"I  do  not  claim  to  have  any  greater  technical  or  general  knowledge 
than  the  average  of  men,  but  I  claim  to  have  some  knowledge,  as  the 
result  of  experience,  that  leads  me  to  make  certain  deductions  as  to 
economic  measures ;  and  when  I  advocate  this  measure  from  my  seat 
in  this  Senate  I  think  I  should  have  the  same  right  and  the  same  con- 
sideration at  the  hands  of  this  body  that  I  am  willing  to  grant  to  any 
other  Senator ;  that  I  am  sincere  and  honest  in  my  convictions,  and  that 
I  am  advocating  the  measure,  not  for  the  purpose,  as  is  claimed  here, 
of  looting  the  Treasury  of  the  United  States,  but  for  advancing  the 
material  interests  of  the  people  of  the  United  States. 

"Mr.  President,  as  far  as  I  am  concerned  as  one  of  the  advocates 
of  this  shipping  bill,  after  having  made  this  statement  I  propose  to 
occupy  the  same  position  from  now  until  the  4th  of  March  that  I  have 
occupied  from  the  beginning  —  to  demand  at  the  hands  of  this  body 
fair  treatment  for  an  honest  measure  with  an  honest  intent;  and 
I  do  not  propose  to  be  side-tracked  by  any  Senator  from  the  other 
side  of  the  Chamber.  I  myself  will  decide  when  I  will  go  on  the 
side-track. 

"For  my  part  I  have  tried  to  be  fair,  and  even  liberal,  to  the  other 
side ;  and  I  am  met  with  the  taunt,  almost  descending  to  personality, 
that  the  purposes  of  those  who  are  advocating  this  measure  is  to  pay 
back  subscriptions  to  political  campaign  funds,  to  pay  political  debts, 
and  that  the  Republican  party  is  the  only  party  that  descends  to  such 
political  measures  —  an  insinuation  that,  by  virtue  of  my  position  as 
Chairman  of  the  National  Republican  Committee,  I  am  responsible 
for  this  legislation  here  in  order  to  make  recompense  to  those  who, 
you  say,  have  contributed  to  the  campaign  fund  of  the  Republican 


SHIP   SUBSIDIES  353 

party.     Is   that   a  part  of  an  economic  question  to  be  discussed 
in  this  body  ?    Is  that  what  you  call  fair  treatment  in  legislation  ? 

"Mr.  President,  as  I  have  said  in  the  beginning,  my  interest  in 
this  measure  is  because  I  believe  it  to  be  for  the  interests  of  the  people 
of  this  country.  I  believe  that  it  means  the  upbuilding  of  a  new 
industry,  a  kindred  industry  to  those  industries  which  have  made  this 
country  great  and  prosperous.  It  means  another  step  in  the  direction 
of  development,  not  confined  to  section  or  to  party,  but  for  the  good 
of  the  whole  country." 

In  conclusion  Mr.  Hanna  turned  upon  his  critics,  and  accused 
them  of  passing  without  a  murmur  a  river  and  harbor  bill  con- 
taining provisions  which  made  the  ship-subsidy  bill  by  com- 
parison look  white  and  innocent.  Whether  any  particular 
measure  for  the  encouragement  of  trade  was  called  a  looting 
of  the  Treasury  or  a  piece  of  constructive  economic  legislation 
depended  upon  the  number  of  Congressional  districts  which  it 
happened  to  benefit.  I  have  read  a  great  deal  of  Mr.  Hanna's 
private  correspondence  with  the  ship-builders  and  operators 
who  would  have  benefited  from  the  operation  of  the  subsidy 
bill,  and  I  failed  to  discover  any  intimation  that  the  bill  was 
not  framed  in  good  faith  to  accomplish  its  ostensible  object. 
Whether,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  would  have  done  so  without 
any  benefit  to  private  interests,  beyond  the  amount  absolutely 
necessary  to  accomplish  the  desired  object,  is  a  question  upon 
which  none  but  an  expert  can  pass.  In  the  course  of  the  debate 
Senator  Spooner  made  some  shrewd  criticisms  of  the  details 
of  both  the  bills,  which  might  well  have  caused  doubts  in  the 
minds  of  his  hearers.  Such  doubts  are  bound  to  arise  when- 
ever the  people  actually  benefited  by  any  attempt  to  encour- 
age a  private  industry  have  a  great  deal  to  say  about  the  terms 
of  its  encouragement.  Economic  legislation  which  seeks  to 
accomplish  a  constructive  business  purpose  by  the  direct  or 
indirect  subsidizing  of  private  interests  should  be  framed,  as 
it  is  in  Germany,  by  experts  whose  opinions  cannot  be  biassed 
by  any  prospect  of  personal  advantage.  Our  American  prac- 
tice had,  however,  been  entirely  different.  With  some  few 
exceptions  all  American  economic  legislation  before  1900  was 
practically  dictated  by  its  beneficiaries.  In  allowing  its  bene- 
ficiaries to  have  a  good  deal  to  say  about  the  ship-subsidy  bill 

2A 


354      MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

Mr.  Hanna  and  his  associates  were  following  a  long-established 
precedent.  But  the  precedent  was  based  upon  the  idea  that 
the  public  and  private  interests  involved  were  substantially 
identical.  Mr.  Hanna  himself  believed  them  to  be  substantially 
identical;  and  when  the  subsidy  legislation  failed  it  was  his 
honest  opinion  that  a  wise  and  necessary  measure  for  promot- 
ing the  expansion  of  American  commerce  had  been  killed  by 
cowardice  and  sectional  prejudice. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

THE   DEATH   OF   PRESIDENT  MCKINLEY 

IN  the  preceding  chapter  the  fate  of  the  attempt  to  revive 
American  shipping  engaged  in  foreign  trade  has  been  followed 
to  the  end,  although  the  end  did  not  take  place  until  after  the 
occurrence  of  many  other  extremely  important  incidents  hi 
Mr.  Hanna's  life.  In  the  meantime  Mr.  McKinley's  second 
inauguration  had  taken  place  amid  much  jubilation  and  per- 
sonal and  party  congratulations.  Mr.  Hanna  had  charge  of 
the  ceremony,  and  during  its  progress  was,  according  to  the 
newspapers,  almost  as  much  its  hero  as  was  the  President  him- 
self. But  the  man  who,  according  to  his  Western  flatterer, 
could  make  the  sun  stand  still  could  not  prevent  the  rain 
from  falling.  The  combined  ceremony  and  festivity  was  marred 
by  the  usual  foul  weather  of  early  March. 

Local  politics  in  Cleveland  occupied  much  of  his  time  during 
the  spring  of  1901.  At  the  municipal  election  held  in  April 
Tom  Johnson  was  elected  Mayor  of  Cleveland  for  the  first  time 
by  a  substantial  majority  over  the  Republican  candidate.  Mr. 
Johnson  continued  to  be  both  Mayor  of  Cleveland  and  a  thorn 
in  the  flesh  to  Mr.  Hanna  for  the  next  three  years.  With  all 
his  talent  for  political  management  he  never  succeeded  in  keep- 
ing the  Republicans  in  control  of  his  own  city — and  that  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  the  city  usually  went  Republican  at  na- 
tional elections.  His  street  railroad  interests  were  undoubtedly 
a  serious  embarrassment  to  him  in  his  handling  of  the  local  politi- 
cal situation,  and  prevented  him  from  acting  or  from  appearing 
to  act  as  disinterestedly  as  he  did  in  state  and  national  politics. 

Senator  Hanna  himself  was  inclined  to  attribute  the  ill  success 
of  the  local  Republican  organization  chiefly  to  one  cause.  Since 
1886,  as  we  have  seen,  the  Republicans  of  Cuyahoga  County 
had  been  nominating  their  candidates  for  office  under  the 
so-called  Crawford  County  system  of  direct  primaries.  The 

355 


356      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

system  in  its  operation  had  undoubtedly  handicapped  the  local 
machine,  when  it  attempted  to  dictate  the  party  nominees,  but 
it  had  also  encouraged  factional  quarrels,  weakened  the  organi- 
zation's fighting  power,  and  produced  a  lot  of  second-rate  candi- 
dates. Mr.  Hanna's  own  opinion  of  its  effects  and  defects  is 
expressed  in  a  speech  made  by  him  to  the  Tippecanoe  and  other 
Republican  clubs  on  May  11,  1901.  He  said  :  — 

"I  have  watched  very  closely  the  workings  of  these  two  plans. 
As  to  the  Crawford  County  plan,  I  have  found  that  its  appli- 
cation in  the  rural  districts  has  resulted  very  successfully,  but 
in  the  large  cities  we  must  judge  theory  by  practice.  The  argu- 
ments in  favor  of  the  convention  plan  are  conclusive.  In  the 
cities  it  is  impossible  to  nominate  the  best  candidates  by  the 
direct  vote  plan.  The  Crawford  County  plan  does  defeat  the 
will  of  the  majority.  It  has  done  so  time  and  time  again. 

"The  primaries  in  the  city  of  Cleveland  last  spring,  and  in 
fact  for  several  years,  have  not  been  representative  of  the  Re- 
publican vote.  An  enrollment  of  Republican  voters  is  advo- 
cated, but  even  then  we  are  liable  to  be  imposed  upon.  There 
are  two  things  of  the  utmost  importance,  which  cannot  be 
accomplished  under  the  Crawford  County  plan — the  distribu- 
tion of  candidates,  geographically;  also  the  proper  recognition 
of  nationalities.  Both  are  very  important.  The  good  men 
of  all  nationalities  should  have  an  opportunity,  and  they  do 
not  have  it  under  the  Crawford  County  plan.  Only  in  a  delib- 
erative body,  such  as  a  convention,  are  they  given  considera- 
tion. These  impressions  come  from  close  observation.  Change 
the  plan  now,  and  we  will  change  the  trend  of  things  in  Cuya- 
hoga  County."  Not  even  Senator  Raima's  influence,  however, 
sufficed  to  make  Cleveland  Republicans  go  back  to  the  conven- 
tion system  of  nominations.  In  a  democracy  nothing  is  more 
difficult  than  to  withdraw  from  the  people  any  power  which 
they  have  once  exercised. 

While  Mr.  Hanna  was  meeting  with  stumbling  blocks  in 
Cleveland,  the  Republicans  in  the  state  accepted  his  leadership 
without  question.  The  State  Convention  assembled  in  Co- 
lumbus on  June  25,  and  in  it  Mr.  Hanna  was  the  dominating 
influence.  It  is  a  rule  in  the  politics  of  Ohio  that  one  good 
term  as  Governor  deserves  another.  Mr.  George  K.  Nash  had 


THE  DEATH  OF  PRESIDENT  MCKINLEY       357 

served  satisfactorily  for  two  years,  and  there  was  no  question 
about  his  renomination.  Senator  Foraker  was  as  usual  the 
orator  of  the  occasion,  and  not  even  Mr.  McKinley's  warmest 
friend  could  have  extolled  the  administration  in  more  glowing 
terms.  Mr.  Hanna  may  have  chafed  at  times,  because  he  was 
obliged  to  cooperate  in  public  politics  with  a  man  with  whom 
he  was  on  such  bad  terms  in  private,  but  if  so,  he  may  have 
been  consoled,  because  of  the  part  which  Mr.  Foraker  was 
obliged  to  play  on  formal  occasions  as  official  praise-monger 
for  the  administration.  Mr.  Hanna  followed  Senator  Foraker, 
and  in  his  speech  brought  the  gospel  of  prosperity  down  to  date. 
Now  that  it  had  really  come,  how  was  it  to  be  continued? 
Manifestly  by  continuing  to  support  the  party  who  had  brought 
it  about.  Only  in  this  way  could  the  newly-made  confidence 
be  retained. 

"The  foundation  of  prosperity  is  confidence — confidence  in 
the  future.  The  business  man,  the  large  operator,  if  he  does 
business  but  for  to-day  and  to-morrow  only  considers  to-day 
and  to-morrow.  If  he  is  limited  to  that  space  of  action  he  gov- 
erns his  actions  accordingly,  and  he  only  operates  for  a  few 
hours  in  advance  because  he  knows  not  what  the  future  may 
bring  forth.  Now,  I  made  it  as  a  statement  as  infallible  as 
the  laws  of  nature  that,  in  order  to  sustain  present  conditions 
in  this  country  he  must  have  absolute  confidence  as  to  what 
is  in  store  for  the  future.  Therefore,  resting  upon  that  founda- 
tion of  security  in  our  finances,  upon  the  policy  which  has  built 
us  up  as  a  nation,  upon  the  policy  which  has  carried  us  forward 
as  a  progressive  nation,  the  great  mass  of  people  will  continue 
to  trust  those  men  and  that  party  and  adopt  it  as  evidence  of 
security  in  future  operations.  It  is  the  operation  of  that  future 
that  makes  business.  It  is  the  confidence  in  the  future  which 
induces  capital  to  expand  and  develop  and  that  brings  to  all 
classes  of  labor  more  work." 

As  there  was  no  disposition  hi  Ohio  to  displace  the  ruling 
powers,  the  campaign  was  not  very  strenuous.  Mr.  Hanna 
himself  went  on  the  stump  for  about  ten  days  just  before  the 
election,  but  he  could  have  spared  himself  the  trouble.  The 
result  was  a  foregone  conclusion,  if  only  because  of  Mr.  McKinley's 
assassination,  which  had  occurred  in  September.  Mr.  Nash 


358      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS  LIFE   AND   WORK 

was  reflected  by  a  plurality  of  60,000.  The  whole  Republican 
state  ticket  was  also  elected  as  well  as  a  safe  majority  in  both 
Houses  of  the  Legislature — thus  assuring  Mr.  Foraker  a  second 
term  in  the  Senate. 

During  the  summer  a  very  good-looking  and  gay  little  ex- 
position was  being  held  in  Buffalo  for  the  sake  ostensibly  of 
celebrating  the  great  fact  or  cause  of  Pan-Americanism.  Presi- 
dent McKinley  had  been  scheduled  to  pay  Buffalo  a  visit  early 
in  September,  and  he  decided  to  take  the  opportunity  of  making 
a  speech  which  would  outline  the  future  policy  of  the  adminis- 
tration. The  recent  increase  in  the  American  exports  of  manu- 
factured goods  had  convinced  him  that  the  country  should 
enter  upon  a  more  liberal  commercial  policy  —  one  which  would 
promote  exports  from  this  country  by  allowing  other  countries 
increasing  opportunities  of  trading  in  the  markets  of  the  United 
States.  According  to  his  usual  habit  he  carefully  prepared 
a  speech  along  the  foregoing  lines;  and  just  before  going  to 
Buffalo  he  met  Mr.  Hanna  by  appointment  and  they  discussed 
fully  the  text  of  the  proposed  address.  The  speech  was  de- 
livered on  September  5,  and  was  received  with  an  outburst  of 
approval  from  practically  the  entire  country. 

About  four  o'clock  on  the  afternoon  of  the  following  day, 
during  a  popular  reception  held  in  one  of  the  Exposition  build- 
ings, President  McKinley  was  shot  by  a  demented  anarchist. 
The  wound  was  serious,  and  all  of  Mr.  McKinley 's  friends  and 
official  family  hurried  to  Buffalo.  Among  them  was  Mr. 
Hanna.  There  was,  of  course,  nothing  to  do  but  wait ;  and  it 
looked,  in  the  beginning,  as  if  the  waiting  would  not  be  in  vain. 
The  wounded  man  appeared  to  be  recovering.  After  several 
days  of  apparently  uninterrupted  progress  on  the  part  of  the 
patient,  the  group  of  secretaries  and  friends  assembled  in  Buffalo 
began  to  disperse.  Mr.  Hanna  finally  decided  that  he  himself 
could  risk  a  brief  absence.  The  national  encampment  of  the 
Grand  Army  of  the  Republic  was  being  held  in  Cleveland  during 
the  coming  week.  His  attendance  had  been  promised.  He 
wanted  to  keep  his  engagement,  because  he  had  just  been  elected 
a  member  of  the  organization,  and  a  political  leader  always 
desires  to  stand  well  with  the  Grand  Army. 


THE    DEATH   OF   PEESIDENT  MCKINLEY  359 

i 

After  making  up  his  mind  to  risk  a  short  absence,  he  went  to 
the  doctors  in  attendance  on  the  President,  and  told  them  that 
he  was  going  over  to  Cleveland  to  keep  an  engagement  with  the 
Grand  Army.  He  asked  them  for  their  very  best  judgment  as 
to  Mr.  McKinley's  condition  so  that  he  could  give  to  his  audi- 
ence absolutely  authentic  news  about  their  President's  and 
comrade's  chances  of  life.  The  doctors  authorized  him  to  say 
that  Mr.  McKinley  had  passed  the  critical  point  of  his  illness 
and  would  live.  So  he  went  to  Cleveland  with  a  light  heart 
and  made  his  speech,  part  of  which  has  already  been  quoted 
in  another  connection.  Before  going  on  the  platform  he  re- 
ceived by  telegraph  from  the  President's  secretary,  Mr.  Cortel- 
you,  a  final  confirmation  of  the  news — which  was  announced 
to  the  audience  and  which  was  received  with  the  liveliest  ex- 
pressions of  relief  and  joy.  Few  Presidents  of  the  United  States 
have  been  more  sincerely  and  generally  liked  than  was  Mr. 
McKinley.  A  committee  of  Cleveland  citizens  was  formed, 
which  organized  and  held  a  meeting  of  thanksgiving  for  the 
President's  promised  recovery. 

That  same  night,  however,  Mr.  Hanna,  who  had  been  ex- 
hausted by  the  strain  and  fatigues  of  the  last  week,  was 
awakened  at  2  A.  M.  by  a  message  from  Buffalo  that  Mr.  McKin- 
ley's  condition  had  suddenly  taken  a  turn  for  the  worse.  By 
four  o'clock  he  was  on  his  way  back  to  Buffalo  in  a  special  train, 
and  when  he  reached  there  he  found  the  President's  condition 
actually  critical.  On  the  evening  of  that  same  day,  when  the 
doctors  realized  that  death  was  a  matter  only  of  a  few  hours, 
a  number  of  relatives  and  friends,  who  were  waiting  in  Mr. 
John  G.  Milburn's  house,  were  allowed  to  have  a  last  look  at 
the  dying  man.  First  Mrs.  McKinley  was  shown  in,  then 
Abner  McKinley,  Justice  Day  and  Mr.  Hanna.  The  President 
was  unconscious  and  barely  alive.  On  no  other  occasion  during 
the  illness  was  Mr.  Hanna  allowed  to  see  him.  Some  days 
before,  the  President  had  inquired:  "Is  Mark  there?"  and 
had  been  told  of  his  friend's  attendance  but  of  the  impossibility 
of  any  interview.  Mr.  Hanna  was  very  much  touched  by  this 
evidence  of  the  sufferer's  interest.  Although  a  self-contained 
man,  he  utterly  broke  down  after  his  visit  to  the  sick  room  and 
cried  like  a  child. 


360      MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

With  almost  a  dozen  other  relatives  and  friends,  Mr.  Hanna, 
waited  in  the  Milburn  library  from  seven  o'clock  in  the  even- 
ing until  the  President's  death  was  announced,  almost  seven 
hours  later.  Early  in  the  night  he  called  to  him  his  secretary, 
Mr.  Dover,  Colonel  Myron  T.  Herrick  and  one  or  two  others,  and 
discussed  with  them  the  necessary  arrangements  for  the  care 
and  transportation  of  the  body  and  the  funeral.  The  different 
parts  of  the  work  were  divided  up  among  the  different  members 
of  the  party,  the  necessary  cooperation  of  the  railroad  officials 
secured,  and  all  the  other  details  planned.  Under  such  cir- 
cumstances any  action  was  a  relief,  and  even  such  painful 
preparations  diminished  the  distress  of  the  dreadful  suspense. 
About  2  A.M.  Mr.  Cortelyou  announced  to  the  group  that  death 
had  finally  come.  Not  a  word  was  spoken.  They  all  left  the 
room  silently  and  soon  afterwards  the  house. 

The  next  morning  Mr.  Hanna  arose  early,  and  drove  down 
to  the  business  section  of  the  city.  There  he  interviewed  the 
railroad  company's  officers,  and  attended  to  his  share  of  the 
necessary  arrangements.  While  returning  from  the  under- 
taker's he  passed  the  house  of  Mr.  Ansley  Wilcox,  and  noticed 
in  its  immediate  vicinity  an  unusual  commotion.  A  number 
of  soldiers,  policemen,  attendants  and  by-standers  were  gath- 
ered around  the  entrance.  Suddenly  he  realized  that  Mr. 
Roosevelt  had  been  staying  in  the  house,  and  that  the  new  Presi- 
dent must  have  been  taking  the  oath  of  office.  Mr.  Hanna 
decided  to  call.  As  soon  as  his  presence  was  announced  Mr. 
Roosevelt  invited  him  in  and  repeated  to  him  the  promise  of 
future  policy  and  behavior  which  had  just  been  made  to  the 
members  of  the  Cabinet.  The  new  President,  realizing  that 
he  had  been  elected  under  the  shadow  of  the  dead  man,  had 
declared  that  he  proposed  to  continue  unbroken  his  predecessor's 
policy  and  Cabinet.  What  followed  can  best  be  narrated  in 
Mr.  Roosevelt's  own  words. 

"In  the  evening  Senator  Hanna  by  arrangement  came  to  call. 
The  dead  man  had  been  his  closest  friend  as  well  as  the  political 
leader  whom  he  idolized  and  whose  right  hand  he  himself  was. 
He  had  been  occupying  a  position  of  power  and  influence,  be- 
cause of  his  joint  relationship  to  the  President  and  Senate,  such 
as  no  other  man  hi  our  history  whom  I  can  recall  ever  occupied. 


THE   DEATH   OF   PKESIDENT   MCKINLEY  361 

"He  had  never  been  very  close  to  me,  although  of  course  we 
had  worked  heartily  together  when  I  was  a  candidate  for  Vice- 
President  and  he  was  managing  the  campaign.  But  we  had 
never  been  closely  associated,  and  I  do  not  think  that  he- had 
at  that  time  felt  particularly  drawn  to  me. 

"The  situation  was  one  in  which  any  small  man,  any  man 
to  whom  petty  motives  appealed,  would  have  been  sure  to  do 
something  which  would  tend  to  bring  about  just  such  a  rift  as 
had  always  divided  from  the  party  leaders  in  Congress  any 
man  coming  to  the  Presidency  as  I  came  to  it.  But  Senator 
Hanna  had  not  a  single  small  trait  in  his  nature.  As  soon  as 
he  called  on  me,  without  any  beating  about  the  bush,  he  told 
me  that  he  had  come  to  say  that  he  would  do  all  in  his  power 
to  make  my  administration  a  success,  and  that,  subject,  of 
course,  to  my  acting  as  my  past  career  and  my  words  that  after- 
noon gave  him  the  right  to  expect,  he  would  in  all  ways  en- 
deavor to  strengthen  and  uphold  my  hands.  There  was  not 
in  his  speech  a  particle  of  subserviency,  no  worship  of  the  rising 
sun.  On  the  contrary,  he  stated  that  he  wished  me  to  under- 
stand that  he  was  in  no  sense  committing  himself  to  favor  my 
nomination  when  the  next  Presidential  election  came  on;  for 
that  was  something  the  future  must  decide ;  but  that  he  would 
do  all  he  could  to  make  my  administration  a  success  and  that 
his  own  counsel  and  support  within  and  without  the  Senate 
should  be  mine  in  the  effort  to  carry  out  the  policies  which  had 
been  so  well  begun.  I,  of  course,  thanked  him  and  told  him 
that  I  understood  his  position  perfectly  and  was  grateful  for 
what  he  had  said. 

"He  made  his  words  good.  There  were  points  on  which  we 
afterwards  differed;  but  he  never  permitted  himself,  as  many 
men  even  of  great  strength  and  high  character  do  permit  them- 
selves, to  allow  his  personal  disapproval  of  some  one  point  of 
the  President's  policy  to  lead  him  into  trying  to  avenge  himself 
by  seeking  to  bring  the  whole  policy  to  naught.  Any  one  who 
has  had  experience  in  politics  knows  what  a  common  failing 
this  is.  The  fact  that  Senator  Hanna  never  showed  the  slight- 
est trace  of  it,  and  never  treated  his  disagreement  with  me  on 
some  difficult  point  as  any  reason  for  withholding  his  hearty  sup- 
port on  other  points,  is  something  which  I  shall  not  soon  forget. 


362      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

"Throughout  my  term  as  President,  until  the  time  of  his 
death,  I  was  in  very  close  relations  with  him.  He  was  contin- 
ually at  the  White  House  and  I  frequently  went  over  to  break- 
fast and  dinner  at  his  house;  while  there  was  no  important 
feature  of  any  of  my  policies  which  I  did  not  carefully  discuss 
with  him.  In  the  great  majority  of  instances  we  were  able 
to  come  to  an  agreement.  I  always  found  that  together  with 
his  ruggedness,  his  fearlessness  and  efficiency  he  combined  entire 
straightforwardness  of  character.  I  never  needed  to  be  in 
doubt  as  to  whether  he  would  carry  through  a  fight  or  in  any 
way  go  back  on  his  word.  He  was  emphatically  a  big  man  of 
strong  aggressive  generous  nature." 

Because  of  Mr.  Roosevelt's  fine  pledge  to  continue  the  policy 
of  his  predecessor,  the  death  of  Mr.  McKinley  and  the  accession 
of  a  new  President  made  at  the  moment  a  smaller  alteration 
in  the  political  situation  than  might  have  been  anticipated. 
But  there  remained  the  terrible  wound  dealt  to  Mr.  Hanna's 
personal  feelings  by  the  loss  of  his  friend.  The  strength  of  his 
attachment  to  Mr.  McKinley  received  a  striking  testimonial, 
when  after  his  visit  to  the  dying  man,  he  broke  down  and  burst 
into  tears.  He  was  a  man  of  intense  feelings,  which  were  rarely, 
if  ever,  betrayed  in  public.  Indeed,  it  seemed  almost  like  a 
point  of  honor  with  him,  as  with  so  many  men  of  strong  will, 
not  to  permit  any  outward  expression  of  his  personal  affections. 
After  long  separation  from  relatives,  to  whom  he  was  and  had 
shown  himself  to  be  devotedly  attached,  he  would  after  their 
return  greet  them  in  a  very  casual  way  or  not  greet  them  at  all. 
He  shrank  instinctively  from  revealing  his  affections  in  the 
ordinary  way,  not  because  he  was  callous  or  indifferent,  but 
because,  perhaps,  they  were  so  lively  that  he  could  not  risk 
their  expression  in  words.  He  allowed  his  actions  to  speak 
for  him. 

His  attachment  to  Mr.  McKinley  was  peculiarly  deep  and 
strong,  because  it  was  compounded,  as  Mr.  Roosevelt  has  sug- 
gested above,  of  two  elements  —  each  of  which  was  fundamental 
in  his  disposition.  He  had  in  the  first  place  a  veritable  gift 
for  friendship.  His  personal  relations  with  other  men  con- 
stituted the  very  core  and  substance  of  his  life.  He  had  served 
Mr.  McKinley,  as  he  had  served  so  many  others,  because  of 


THE   DEATH   OF   PRESIDENT  MCKINLEY  363 

disinterested  personal  devotion ;  but  in  the  case  of  Mr.  McKin- 
ley  the  personal  devotion  was  heightened  by  feelings  derived 
from  another  source.  This  particular  friendship  had  awakened 
his  aspirations.  His  general  disposition  was  such  that  an  ideal 
could  make  a  peculiarly  strong  appeal  to  him  only  when  it  was 
embodied  hi  a  human  being.  Mr.  McKinley's  finer  qualities 
aroused  in  him  the  utmost  admiration.  He  was  profoundly 
impressed  by  the  unfailing  patience,  consideration  and  devo- 
tion which  his  friend  had  lavished  on  an  ailing  and  difficult 
wife.  He  was,  perhaps,  even  more  impressed  by  Mr.  McKinley  's 
repeated  refusals  to  obtain  any  political  advantage  by  com- 
promises with  conscience.  As  he  himself  has  said,  Mr. 
McKinley's  declaration  that  there  were  some  things  which 
a  Presidential  candidate  must  not  do  even  to  be  President  had 
made  a  better  man  of  him.  And  undoubtedly  his  friend's 
influence  upon  his  life  and  career  was  really  elevating.  His 
own  personal  standards  of  behavior  in  politics  steadily  im- 
proved, partly  because  he  was  fully  capable  of  rising  to  a  re- 
sponsibility, as  well  as  to  an  opportunity,  but  also  partly  be- 
cause of  the  leavening  effect  of  his  association  with  his  friend. 
This  association  had  meant  to  Mr.  Hanna  more  than  his  fame, 
his  career  and  his  public  achievements.  It  had  meant  as  well 
the  increase  of  public  usefulness  and  personal  self-respect  which 
a  man  can  obtain  only  by  remaining  true  to  a  certain  standard 
of  public  behavior. 

Towards  the  end  of  his  life  Mr.  Hanna  became  increasingly 
aware  of  a  difference  between  himself  and  Mr.  McKinley  in 
their  respective  attitudes  towards  personal  ties  and  responsibili- 
ties. He  never  gave  explicit  expression  to  this  difference,  but 
he  was  glancing  at  it  in  the  following  passage  in  the  National 
Magazine  on  "McKinley  as  I  knew  Him."  "We  were  both," 
he  says,  "of  Scotch-Irish  descent,  but  opposite  in  disposition. 
He  was  of  more  direct  descent  than  I,  but  it  was  thought  from 
our  dispositions  that  he  had  the  Scotch  and  I  had  the  Irish  of 
the  combination."  What  he  means  by  this  is  probably  that 
personal  relationships  were  not  so  vital  to  Mr.  McKinley  as 
they  were  to  himself.  Mr.  McKinley  acted  less  than  he  did 
on  the  prompting  of  instinct  and  affection.  The  mere  fact 
that  the  President  was  the  more  conscientious  man  of  the  two 


364      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

tended  also  to  make  him  more  conscious  and  less  consistent  in 
his  feelings.  Mr.  McKinley  was  solicitous  of  the  appearance 
which  he  was  making  to  the  world  and  posterity,  and  this 
quality  might  sometimes  give  his  behavior  at  least  the  appear- 
ance of  selfishness.  I  am  not  implying  that  he  was  not  a  loyal 
and  in  his  way  a  sincere  man;  but  loyalty  was  not  to  him  as 
fundamental  a  virtue  as  it  was  to  Mr.  Hanna.  He  might  have 
considered  the  possibility  of  breaking  with  his  friend  under 
conditions  which  would  in  Mr.  Raima's  eyes  have  wholly 
failed  to  justify  the  rupture.  In  point  of  fact  the  latent  and 
actual  differences  between  the  two  men  never  gathered  to  a 
head.  I  have  told  the  story  of  their  few  important  disagree- 
ments ;  but  the  wonder  is,  not  that  they  were  there  to  tell,  but 
that  they  were  not  more  frequent  and  more  serious.  They 
do  not  in  any  way  invalidate  the  popular  impression  that  the 
association  between  the  two  men  was,  perhaps,  the  most  loyal 
friendship  which  has  become  a  part  of  American  political 
history. 

An  honest  friendship  endures,  not  because  it  does  not  have 
any  differences  to  overcome,  but  because  it  is  strong  enough 
to  overcome  such  differences  as  inevitably  occur.  The  associa- 
tion of  Mr.  Hanna  and  Mr.  McKinley  was  punctuated  with 
many  trivial  disputes  which  never  became  serious,  partly  be- 
cause of  the  President's  tact.  The  two  men  had  to  reach  a 
mutually  acceptable  decision  about  thousands  of  bits  of  official 
business  or  policy  in  the  course  of  a  year.  Their  decisions  were 
at  times  bound  to  diverge,  and  when  such  divergence  arose  they 
might  for  a  moment  wear  the  appearance  of  being  serious.  Mr. 
Hanna  was  a  plain-dealer,  honest  and  fearless  to  a  fault,  brusque 
sometimes  in  manner,  quick  in  feeling  and  explosive  in  speech. 
When  he  disagreed  with  another  man  he  might  say  so  with  both 
heat  and  energy.  Under  such  circumstances  Mr.  McKinley 
was  at  his  best.  He  was  too  tactful  and  prudent  to  make 
matters  worse  by  any  contradiction  or  disputation.  He  knew 
that  in  a  few  minutes  or  hours  the  storm  would  blow  over,  and 
that  Mr.  Hanna  would  then  be  willing  to  resume  the  discussion 
with  a  cool  head  and  the  utmost  good  temper. 

These,  however,  were  small  things.  What  really  tested  the 
friendship  was  the  change  which  gradually  took  place  in  their 


THE   DEATH   OF   PRESIDENT  MCKINLEY  365 

respective  public  positions.  Mr.  McKinley  was,  as  I  have  said, 
extremely  solicitous  of  his  reputation.  From  the  day  he  was 
first  elected  President  he  was  represented  as  being  under  Mr. 
Raima's  control  far  more  than  was  actually  the  case  and  to  an 
extent  which  must  have  been  galling.  In  matters  of  public 
policy  he  was  always  his  own  master  —  at  least  so  far  as  Mr. 
Hanna  was  concerned;  and  even  in  the  latter's  own  special 
field  of  political  management  he  by  no  means  merely  submitted 
to  Mr.  Hanna's  dictation.  Mr.  George  B.  Cortelyou,  who 
had  the  best  opportunities  for  judging,  considered  that  Mr. 
McKinley  was  an  abler  politician  than  Mr.  Hanna  —  and  this 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  ranks  Mr.  Hanna's  ability  very  high. 
Mr.  McKinley  did  not  get  the  credit  for  being  either  as  inde- 
pendent, as  courageous  or  as  self-dependent  as  he  really  was. 
Furthermore,  as  time  went  on,  Mr.  Hanna  increased  rather  than 
diminished  in  public  stature;  and  as  he  increased  the  Presi- 
dent became  not  absolutely  but  relatively  smaller.  Comic 
papers  like  Life  published  cartoons,  in  one  of  which  Mr. 
Hanna  was  represented  as  a  tall  robust  English  gentleman  with 
Mr.  McKinley  at  his  side  dressed  in  a  short  coat  and  knee 
breeches.  It  was  entitled  "Buttons."  Such  a  portrayal  of 
their  relationship  would  have  been  exasperating  even  had  it 
been  true ;  but  it  was  not  true. 

If  there  had  been  any  truth  in  it,  the  friendship  between  the 
two  men  could  not  have  lasted.  Mr.  McKinley  was  bound 
to  overlook  the  occasional  public  perversion  of  their  relation 
one  to  another,  because  as  a  matter  of  fact  Mr.  Hanna  had 
always  recognized  in  his  behavior  towards  his  friend  the  essen- 
tial difference  in  their  positions.  Mr.  McKinley  was  the  master, 
Mr.  Hanna  was  only  the  able  and  trusted  Prime  Minister. 
The  latter  never  presumed  upon  his  friendship  with  the  Presi- 
dent, upon  the  contribution  he  had  made  towards  Mr.  McKin- 
ley's  nomination  or  election  or  upon  the  increasing  independence 
and  stability  of  his  own  public  position.  Everybody  most 
familiar  with  their  private  relations  testifies  that  Mr.  Hanna 
asked  for  nothing  in  the  way  of  patronage  to  which  he  was  not 
fully  entitled.  The  extent  of  his  ability  or  his  willingness  to 
obtain  favors  on  merely  personal  grounds  was  very  much  over- 
estimated. He  was  erroneously  credited,  for  instance,  with 


366       MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

many  of  Mr.  McKinley's  own  appointments  to  offices  in  Ohio. 
Of  course  he  was  more  assertive  in  urging  upon  the  President 
appointments  which  were  in  his  opinion  necessary  for  the  wel- 
fare of  the  party,  and  his  judgment  about  such  matters  fre- 
quently differed  from  that  of  the  President.  But  even  in  this 
respect  their  peculiar  relationship  was  mutually  helpful,  be- 
cause each  could  in  some  measure  protect  the  other  against 
excessive  demands  on  the  part  of  Republican  politicians. 

At  bottom  the  central  fact  in  the  relationship  was  the  dis- 
interestedness of  Mr.  Hanna.  He  was  able  to  maintain  his 
friendship  with  the  President  under  very  trying  conditions 
because  his  recommendations  were  made,  not  in  his  own  interest 
but  in  that  of  the  President,  the  party  or  the  country.  He 
never  sought  to  use  his  existing  power,  from  whatever  source 
it  came,  for  the  sake  merely  of  increasing  it.  His  waxing  per- 
sonal influence  was  always  the  by-product  of  his  actual  services 
to  some  individual,  organization  or  cause.  The  late  Bishop 
Potter  said  of  his  management  of  the  Civic  Federation  that  he 
had  grown  up  to  the  job ;  and  the  comment  supplies  the  clew 
to  all  the  success  of  his  career.  He  had  grown  up  to  one  job 
after  another.  He  had  grown  up  to  the  job  of  nominating  his 
friend  as  Presidential  candidate,  to  the  job  of  managing  a  criti- 
cal and  strenuous  national  campaign,  to  the  job  of  securing 
the  personal  confidence  of  the  American  business  interest,  to 
the  job  of  making  himself  personally  popular  with  the  people 
of  Ohio,  to  the  job  of  becoming  one  of  the  steering  committee 
of  the  Senate,  and  finally,  as  we  shall  see,  to  the  job  of  obtaining 
effective  influence  over  organized  labor  as  well  as  organized 
capital.  But  in  his  assumption  and  exercise  of  these  activities 
he  had  never  planned  his  own  personal  aggrandizement.  He 
was  loyal,  that  is,  to  the  proper  limitations  of  his  various  official 
and  unofficial  duties ;  and  this  just  estimate  of  the  limits  of  his 
power  was  merely  another  aspect  of  his  personal  loyalty  —  of 
his  disposition  to  allow  other  people  a  freedom  of  movement 
analogous  to  his  own.  He  did  not  pervert  his  opportunities, 
because  he  would  not  bring  pressure  to  bear  upon  his  friends 
or  demand  of  them  excessive  and  unnecessary  sacrifices. 

In  the  case  of  President  McKinley  he  was  the  more  bound 
to  scrupulous  loyalty  because  of  his  affection  for  the  friend, 


THE   DEATH   OF   PRESIDENT   MCKINLEY  367 

because  of  his  reverence  for  the  office  and  because  of  his  ad- 
miration for  the  man.  He  spoke  and  wrote  of  Mr.  McKinley, 
particularly  after  the  latter's  death,  in  terms  that  may  seem 
extravagant,  but  which  are  undoubtedly  sincere  and  which 
really  revealed  his  feelings  at  the  time.  "It  is  difficult,"  he 
says,  "for  me  to  express  the  extent  of  the  love  and  respect  which 
I,  in  common  with  many  others,  felt  for  him  personally.  The 
feeling  was  the  outgrowth  of  an  appreciation  of  his  noble  self- 
sacrificing  nature.  My  affection  for  him  and  faith  and  con- 
fidence in  him  always  seemed  to  be  reciprocated,  to  the  extent 
that  there  was  never  an  unpleasant  word  passed  between  us, 
and  the  history  of  his  administration,  his  Cabinet  and  his  asso- 
ciations with  public  men  was  entirely  free  from  intrigue  and 
base  selfishness.  I  had  the  closest  revelations  of  William 
McKinley's  character,  I  think,  in  our  quiet  hours  of  smoking 
and  chatting  when  all  the  rest  had  retired.  For  past  midnight  we 
have  sat  many  times  talking  over  those  matters  which  friends 
always  discuss  —  and  the  closer  I  came  to  the  man,  the  more 
lovable  his  character  appeared.  There  was  revealed  the  gentle 
growing  greatness  of  the  man  who  knew  men,  respected  them 
and  loved  them.  These  pleasant  episodes  of  a  purely  personal 
nature  are  emphasized  more  and  more  as  I  think  of  him,  and 
it  is  these  that  I  most  cherish  in  the  memory  of  the  man.  His 
greatness  as  a  statesman  was  but  the  reflection  of  his  greatness 
as  a  man."  And  in  an  address  delivered  at  Toledo  in  Septem- 
ber, 1903,  on  the  occasion  of  the  unveiling  of  a  memorial  statue 
to  Mr.  McKinley,  Mr.  Hanna  said:  "The  truest  monument 
of  the  life  of  William  McKinley  was  built  and  erected  stone  by 
stone  as  he  lived  his  noble  useful  life  until  it  touched  the  sky 
and  was  finished  by  the  hands  of  the  angels.  It  is  the  monu- 
ment of  a  good  man's  great  love  for  his  country  and  will  forever 
and  forever  remain  as  an  example  to  us  all." 

The  preceding  quotations  must  not,  of  course,  be  consid- 
ered as  a  critical  judgment  on  Mr.  McKinley 's  character  and 
career,  but  as  the  tribute  of  a  friend,  the  warmth  of  whose  ad- 
miration had  been  increased  by  the  President's  tragic  death. 
In  Mark  Hanna's  life  Mr.  McKinley  had  been  the  personal 
embodiment  of  those  qualities  of  unselfishness,  kindness  and 
patriotism  which  in  the  preceding  quotations  the  Senator 


368      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

celebrates  with  so  much  emotion.  There  was  just  enough 
difference  between  the  ideas  and  standards  of  the  two  men  to 
enable  one  to  have  a  profound  and  edifying  effect  on  the  other. 
Neither  of  them  was  a  political  idealist  or  reformer.  Neither 
of  them  had  travelled  very  far  ahead  of  the  current  standards 
of  political  morality  and  the  current  ideas  of  political  and  eco- 
nomic policy.  Both  of  them  combined  in  a  typically  American 
way  a  thoroughly  realistic  attitude  towards  practical  political 
questions  with  a  large  infusion  of  traditional  American  patriotic 
aspiration.  These  agreements  in  their  general  attitude  towards 
public  affairs  made  the  chief  difference  between  them  all  the 
more  influential  in  Mr.  Hanna's  life  and  behavior.  While 
not  a  reformer,  Mr.  McKinley  was  more  sensitive  to  the  press- 
ure and  the  value  of  a  reforming  public  opinion;  and  he  was 
more  scrupulous  in  considering  whether  the  end  justified  the 
means.  He  had  no  call  to  eradicate  American  political  and 
economic  abuses,  but  he  did  not  want  his  own  success  to  be 
qualified  by  practices  which  might  look  dubious  to  posterity. 
He  succeeded  in  making  Mr.  Hanna  realize  the  necessity  and 
the  value  of  these  better  standards,  and  by  so  doing  stimulated 
in  the  latter  a  higher  realism,  which  increased  with  age.  Each 
of  the  two  friends,  consequently,  owed  much  to  the  other,  and 
each  of  them  paid  his  debt.  Their  friendship  was  worthy  of 
the  respect  and  of  the  renown  which  it  inspired  in  their  con- 
temporaries. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

THE   PANAMA   CANAL 

IN  view  of  the  intimate  association  between  the  political 
careers  of  William  McKinley  and  Mark  Hanna,  the  former's 
death  might  have  been  expected  to  injure  the  political  power 
and  prestige  of  his  friend.  Nothing  of  the  kind  occurred.  If 
anything  the  assassination  of  President  McKinley  strength- 
ened the  position  of  Mr.  Hanna  and  made  the  sources  of  his 
power  flow  more  abundantly.  The  interval  of  two  years  and 
some  months  between  Mr.  McKinley's  assassination  and  Mr. 
Hanna's  death  constituted  the  culminating  period  of  the  latter's 
political  career  —  the  period  in  which  his  influence  was  most 
effective,  his  activities  most  varied  and  wholesome,  his  per- 
sonal merits  most  widely  understood  and  appreciated  and  his 
prospects  most  flattering. 

The  mere  fact  of  Mr.  McKinley's  assassination  reacted  in 
Mr.  Hanna's  favor.  There  was  a  general  feeling  that  the 
rancorous  abuse  of  which  the  dead  President  had  been  the 
victim  had  at  least  indirectly  contributed  to  the  tragedy. 
The  public  knew  that  Mr.  Hanna  had  been  even  more  malig- 
nantly and  systematically  abused  than  had  his  friend,  and  they 
knew  better  than  ever  how  little  he  had  deserved  it.  His  hold 
on  popular  confidence  was  increased  by  the  grief  and  indigna- 
tion caused  by  Mr.  McKinley's  assassination  and  by  the  belief 
that  the  martyred  President's  mantle  had  descended  on  his 
shoulders.  The  conservative  public  opinion  of  the  country 
came  more  than  ever  to  consider  Mr.  Hanna  as  its  leader  and 
representative,  and  to  have  faith  that  his  leadership  would  be 
both  politically  and  economically  successful. 

One  of  the  clearest  expressions  of  the  change  in  public  sen- 
timent towards  Mr.  Hanna  which  had  been  gradually  taking 
place,  was  given  in  an  address  made  at  a  dinner  which  Mr. 
Hanna  offered  to  the  Gridiron  Club  of  Washington  in  March, 
2n  369 


370      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

1902.  The  Gridiron  Club  is  composed  of  the  Washington  cor- 
respondents of  newspapers,  scattered  all  over  the  country, 
and  their  usual  attitude  toward  the  public  men  who  dine 
with  them  is  far  from  being  reverent  or  even  respectful.  Mr. 
Hanna  had,  however,  made  himself  popular  with  the  news- 
paper correspondents,  as  he  did  with  every  one  else  who  came 
into  actual  contact  with  him,  and  they  were  glad  to  bear  wit- 
ness to  his  increasing  personal  prestige.  The  following  address 
was  made  by  Mr.  Raymond  Patterson :  — 

"SENATOR  HANNA: 

"It  is  generally  understood  that  the  man  who  gives  a  dinner  is  safe 
from  the  assaults  of  his  guests.  Even  an  Indian  or  an  Ohio  Democrat 
would  refrain  from  tomahawking  his  host,  at  least  until  they  had  finished 
the  pie.  But  as  you  know,  the  Gridiron  Club  is  not  bound  by  ordinary 
rules,  and  we  claim  the  right  to  kill  our  mountain  lions  wherever  we  find 
them.  It  becomes  my  painful  duty,  therefore,  as  the  representative  of 
this  club,  to  impeach  you  of  high  crimes  and  misdemeanors.  You, 
sir,  have  proven  yourself  the  most  despicable  hypocrite  of  the  century. 
You  have  betrayed  our  confidence  most  shamefully  and  you  have  failed 
to  live  up  to  your  reputation  in  a  way  which  should  cause  the  blush  of 
shame  to  crimson  your  brazen  cheeks. 

"  We  cherished  in  our  bosoms  a  most  precious  scoundrel  and  here  you 
have  developed  into  a  most  tawdry  saint.  You  arrived  in  our  midst 
indorsed  by  popular  clamor  and  by  Homer  Davenport  as  a  plutocrat 
and  a  dollar-mark,  the  vicious  tool  of  wicked  trusts,  and  the  embodiment 
of  financial  arrogance.  How  have  you  lived  up  to  this  reputation? 
Dare  you  deny  that  you  have  failed  to  justify  the  confidence  reposed 
in  you?  You  have  outraged  all  decency,  let  me  tell  you,  by  your  shame- 
less backslidings  toward  virtue.  Instead  of  an  illiterate  parvenu  we 
have  been  forced  to  associate  with  a  polished  gentleman,  and  the 
ignorant  politician  has  degenerated  into  the  shrewd  statesman. 

"  Where  is  our  brutal  political  leader,  our  grasping  money  grabber, 
our  stock- jobbing  boodler  ?  What  have  you  done  with  him  ?  Are  you 
prepared  either  to  produce  the  body  or  confess  the  crime  ?  How  comes 
it  that  the  mere  buyer  of  legislatures,  who  was  supposed  to  be  as  voice- 
less in  public  as  the  tomb,  made  his  de"but  before  this  club  with  a  ready 
wit  and  a  merry  humor  which  have  become  historic  ?  How  comes  it 
that  the  enemy  of  the  working  man  is  now  the  chosen  instrument  for 
the  settlement  of  disputes  between  capital  and  labor?  Which  is 
Jekyll  and  which  is  Hyde  ? 

"  I  was  delegated  to  present  to  the  real  Mark  Hanna  a  souvenir  of 


THE   PANAMA   CANAL  371 

the  feelings  of  the  Gridiron  Club,  but  I  scarcely  know  whether  to  make  a 
presentation  to  the  memory  of  the  reprobate  the  people  were  told  you 
were  or  to  the  real  Hanna  of  to-day,  the  statesman,  the  broad-gauged 
man  of  affairs,  the  good  fellow  and  our  friend.  There  are  in  this 
club  sixty  men,  and  as  slight  testimonial  of  the  fact  that  all  of  them 
join  in  this  expression  of  sentiment,  the  face  of  every  one  of  them  has 
been  photographed  indelibly  on  the  indestructible  copper  of  this  sacred 
gridiron.  It  is  unique,  as  you  will  see,  but  the  sentiment  behind  it  is  far 
from  singular. 

"  These  sixty  faces  may  recall  to  you  the  fact  that  you  have  achieved  a 
triumph  such  as  comes  to  but  few  men.  You  have  destroyed  a  popular 
myth,  and  now  to-day  across  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  country, 
Mark  Hanna  the  boodler,  Mark  Hanna  the  bullying  political  boss, 
Mark  Hanna  the  trickster  and  the  parvenu,  has  absolutely  disappeared 
from  the  public  press.  The  purity  of  your  life,  the  exquisite  good- 
fellowship  which  we  learned  so  rapidly  to  recognize,  the  steadfastness  of 
your  purposes,  the  honesty  of  your  methods  and  above  all  the  fidelity 
to  the  dead  McKinley  more  tender  even  than  to  the  living  President, 
all  these  qualities  have  dissipated  the  black  clouds  of  envy,  of  malice 
and  of  partisan  venom,  and  have  won  for  you  a  peculiar  place  in  the 
hearts  of  the  people. 

"So,  sir,  it  becomes  my  duty  to  present  to  you  this  emblazoned 
gridiron,  bearing  on  its  polished  bars  the  individual  portraits  of  our 
membership,  which  shall  be  at  once  a  monument  to  the  dead  and  gone 
Hanna  the  people  tried  so  hard  to  hate,  and  also  it  shall  be  the  final 
testimonial  of  the  living  Uncle  Mark  we  have  so  learned  to  love." 

Another  cause  contributed  to  the  enhancement  of  Mr.  Hanna's 
political  prestige.  The  death  of  Mr.  McKinley  had  not  appar- 
ently done  anything  to  diminish  his  influence  at  the  White 
House.  He  entered  at  once  into  very  intimate  and  confidential 
relations  with  the  new  President.  When  two  men  occupying 
responsible  positions  and  forced  by  those  positions  into  constant 
association  work  together  smoothly  and  efficiently,  the  result 
looks  so  natural  and  inevitable  that  few  people  stop  to  consider 
how  much  easier  and  more  natural  a  disagreement  might  have 
been.  In  the  case  of  Mr.  Roosevelt  and  Mr.  Hanna  a  disagree- 
ment might  have  been  plausibly  predicted.  In  the  past  they 
had  never  been  closely  associated,  and  each  was  aware  that  he 
had  been  more  or  less  criticised  by  the  other.  Each  was  aware  of 
certain  fundamental  differences  of  opinion  and  political  outlook. 


372      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

But  both  were  also  aware  how  necessary  it  was  for  Republican 
success  that  the  new  President  and  the  old  organization  should 
not  fall  into  a  suspicious  and  hostile  attitude  one  to  the  other. 

When  the  new  President,  the  day  after  his  predecessor's 
death,  gave  his  wise  and  reassuring  pledge  that  he  would  not 
depart  from  the  policy  of  the  McKinley  administration,  the 
way  was  open  for  a  working  agreement.  Mr.  Hanna  immedi- 
ately entered  the  opening.  He  was  always  willing  to  meet 
another  man  more  than  halfway,  and  after  Mr.  Roosevelt's 
pledge  he  was  not  only  ready  but  eager  to  offer  his  services 
to  the  new  President.  They  both  had  the  good  sense  and  the 
good  feeling  to  recognize  what  the  situation  demanded  and 
both  proved  capable  of  acting  up  to  its  needs.  Each  of  them 
came  to  understand  that  he  was  dealing  with  a  man  who  was 
dealing  fairly  and  considerately  with  him.  They  became, 
consequently,  not  only  efficient  co-workers,  but  good  friends. 
As  they  knew  each  other  better,  they  liked  each  other  the  more. 
The  President  was  loyal  to  his  promise  that  during  the  re- 
mainder of  the  term  he  would  consider  himself  as  in  a  sense 
his  predecessor's  deputy.  Mr.  Hanna  was  equally  true  to  his 
promise  that  the  administration  should  have  his  loyal  support 
and  his  best  advice.  With  Mr.  Roosevelt,  as  with  Mr.  McKinley, 
his  influence,  whatever  it  amounted  to,  was  not  due  to  friend- 
ship or  favor.  He  was  powerful  with  both  men,  because  he 
was  disinterested  and  because  he  was  really  useful,  and  appar- 
ently he  was  almost  as  frequently  consulted  by  one  as  by  the 
other.  The  private  secretary  of  both  the  old  President  and 
the  new  states  that  Mr.  Hanna's  counsel  was  as  influential  in 
the  White  House  in  1902  as  it  had  been  early  in  1901. 

Furthermore,  during  the  long  session  of  1901-1902  Senator 
Hanna  looms  up,  at  least  for  the  public  eye,  as  a  much  bigger 
figure  than  ever  in  the  legislative  counsels  of  his  country.  I 
have  already  traced  the  gradual  transition  from  his  earlier 
silence  in  the  public  debates  of  the  Senate  to  an  active  par- 
ticipation in  the  discussions  of  at  least  certain  economic  ques- 
tions.4 The  ship-subsidy  bill  first  brought  him  prominently 
into  notice  as  a  legislator  and  debater;  but  during  the  long 
session  of  1901-1902  his  Senatorial  activity  was  far  from  being 
confined  to  that  one  subject.  He  was  throughout  that  session 


THE    PANAMA   CANAL  373 

emphatically  the  most  energetic  and  conspicuous  member  of 
the  Senate.  The  business  man,  who  not  long  before  had  asked 
the  indulgence  of  his  colleagues  as  a  tyro  in  debating,  had  be- 
come, not  of  course  the  best  debater  in  the  Senate,  but  the 
speaker  to  whom  all  listened  most  attentively  and  whose  words 
actually  carried  most  weight. 

He  spoke  during  the  session  of  1901-1902  upon  a  much  wider 
range  of  public  business.  It  happened  to  be  a  very  active 
legislative  year,  in  which  many  important  measures  were 
enacted,  and  in  which  a  still  larger  number  received  more  or 
less  consideration.  Among  the  acts  passed  was  one  providing 
for  the  construction  of  an  Isthmian  Canal,  one  continuing  in 
force  the  policy  of  excluding  immigrants  from  China,  one 
providing  for  civil  government  in  the  Philippines,  one  insti- 
tuting a  national  system  of  irrigation,  and  one  founding  a  De- 
partment of  Commerce  and  Labor.  In  addition  the  ship-sub- 
sidy bill  was,  as  we  have  seen,  exhaustively  debated  and  passed 
in  the  Senate,  and  the  question  of  Cuban  reciprocity  received 
some  preliminary  consideration.  Mr.  Hanna  took  no  part 
in  the  debate  upon  the  Instrument  of  government  for  the 
Philippines  nor  in  that  upon  the  Irrigation  Act;  but  in  the 
discussion  of  all  the  other  subjects  of  legislation  his  participa- 
tion was  in  all  cases  important  and  in  two  cases  absolutely 
decisive. 

This  enlargement  of  the  scope  of  his  legislative  action  is  of 
peculiar  significance  in  relation  to  the  development  of  Mr. 
Hanna's  public  personality.  He  entered  political  life  as  a 
successful  political  manager  and  as  a  business  man — the  repre- 
sentative in  politics  of  a  business  interest.  He  brought  to  his 
new  task  no  special  equipment  for  public  life.  He  had  never 
held  an  administrative  office.  He  had  never  made  any  special 
study  of  the  political  and  economic  history  of  his  own  and  other 
countries.  He  had  never  been  trained  to  express  himself  with 
precision  and  with  cumulative  effect.  He  was  entirely  without 
that  legal  discipline  which,  in  the  majority  of  American  politi- 
cal leaders,  is  substituted  for  a  sound  political  and  economic 
education.  For  a  long  time,  consequently,  he  was  dumb,  ex- 
cept as  the  spokesman  of  his  original  interest  in  business ;  and 
he  was  dumb,  because  he  was  conscious  of  his  own  deficiencies 


374      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

and  would  not  speak,  except  whereof  he  knew.  But  he  had  an 
alert  and  open  mind.  If  he  could  not  learn  from  books,  he 
could  learn  even  more  from  other  men  and  from  the  increasing 
personal  activities  and  responsibilities.  He  was  gradually 
growing  up  to  the  job  of  being  in  a  way  the  representative  in 
the  Senate  of  a  responsible  administration.  Little  by  little 
experience  of  large  affairs  took  the  place  of  preliminary  training. 
He  began  to  participate  in  the  discussion  of  other  than  busi- 
ness questions,  because  he  had  gradually  come  to  know  his  own 
mind,  and,  still  better,  to  formulate  a  group  of  general  ideas 
in  respect  to  public  policy. 

His  increasing  participation  in  the  debates  is  not  to  be  con- 
fused with  a  growing  loquacity  or  fluency.  If  on  the  one  hand 
he  had  no  intellectual  imagination  or  interest  in  ideas  for  their 
own  sake,  so,  on  the  other,  he  had  no  more  facility  either  with 
words  or  ideas.  He  was  enterprising  and  experimental  in  ac- 
tion, but  not  in  thought  and  in  expression.  Whatever  he  said 
was  always  the  result  of  an  actual  experience.  His  ideas  were 
his  actions,  and  what  he  took  to  be  his  responsibilities  turned 
inside  out.  When  he  spoke  upon  a  wider  range  of  public  ques- 
tions, it  meant  that  he  had  become  in  a  way  an  authority  on 
those  questions — an  authority,  not  in  the  sense  that  he  knew 
all  about  them  and  could  discuss  them  exhaustively  and  lumi- 
nously, but  in  the  sense  that  he  felt  himself  authorized  to  speak 
as  a  matter  of  personal  experience  and  conviction  and  of  public 
duty. 

His  attitude  towards  public  questions  was  usually  deter- 
mined by  a  sense  of  national  administrative  responsibility. 
Thus  during  the  session  of  1901-1902  he  argued  at  some  length 
on  behalf  of  a  Department  of  Commerce  and  Labor,  in  order  that 
the  government  might  be  equipped  to  serve  the  industry  of  the 
country  as  well  as  its  agriculture.  Again  he  argued  in  favor  of 
the  traditional  policy  of  excluding  Chinese  immigration,  but 
against  certain  proposed  amendments  to  the  Exclusion  Act, 
which  would  have  violated  American  treaty  obligations  and 
unnecessarily  have  injured  Chinese  susceptibilities.  He  spoke  in 
favor  of  a  proposed  agreement  with  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad 
Co.  providing  for  the  erection  of  a  Union  station  in  Washington, 
whose  location  and  design  would  be  worthy  of  the  capital  of 


THE    PANAMA   CANAL  375 

the  United  States.  Finally  he  earnestly  urged  the  adoption  of 
a  treaty  of  commercial  reciprocity  with  Cuba  on  the  ground 
chiefly  of  moral  obligation.  This  final  instance  is  particularly 
illuminating,  because  important  business  interests  were  opposed 
to  the  adoption  and  pressed  him  not  to  come  out  in  its  favor. 
He  denied  that  any  injury  would  result  to  American  business, 
but  he  urged  that  the  national  moral  obligation  to  promote  the 
welfare  of  Cuba  was  manifest  and  valid.  It  ought  to  be  re- 
deemed, if  necessary,  even  at  some  expense  to  American 
business. 

His  point  of  view  in  relation  to  all  these  questions  of  public 
policy  was  national.  Each  one  of  them  involved  an  obligation 
on  the  part  of  the  general  government  either  to  redeem  a 
promise  or  to  promote  a  genuine  national  interest ;  and  it  is  not 
accidental  that  Senator  Hanna  was  always  found  speaking  and 
voting  on  this  one  side.  He  felt  himself  responsible  for  the 
promotion  of  the  national  welfare  —  in  so  far  as  it  was  involved 
in  any  proposed  legislative  action.  He  was  not  simply  a  Sena- 
tor from  Ohio.  He  was  the  leader  of  the  party  in  complete 
control  of  the  general  government;  and  as  the  leader  of  the 
party  and  an  influential  member  of  the  Senate,  he  became  the 
representative  in  Congress  of  the  responsible  administration  of 
the  country.  The  President  found  it  useful  to  consult  with 
him  about  legislative  affairs  more  than  any  other  single  Senator 
and  Congressman.  Senator  Hanna  was  in  a  position  to  get 
things  done.  He  could  actually  influence  votes.  A  President 
who  wanted  to  have  things  done  was  obliged  to  lean  upon  him. 

Any  attempt  to  describe  Senator  Hanna's  position  in  the 
Senate  during  this  session  incurs  dangers  of  exaggeration.  His 
power  was  extraordinary,  but  it  was  very  delicately  balanced. 
As  long  as  the  balance  was  held,  he  could  accomplish  great 
things,  but  even  a  slight  disturbance  of  the  balance  might  have 
left  him  relatively  uninfluential.  Officially  he  was  merely 
junior  Senator  from  Ohio.  All  the  rest  was  a  matter  of  personal 
prerogative,  depending  on  the  confidence  which  the  President, 
certain  fellow-Senators,  certain  Republican  leaders,  and  a  cer- 
tain part  of  the  public  had  in  him.  If  his  power  had  been  in 
any  way  strained  or  abused,  the  confidence  on  which  it  rested 
would  have  been  shattered.  If  it  had  been  even  proclaimed 


376       MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS  LIFE   AND   WORK 

or  admitted,  it  would  have  encountered  far  more  opposition. 
Nevertheless  it  was  very  real,  and  in  attempting  to  find  an 
analogy  for  it,  one  has  to  go  outside  American  political  experi- 
ence. It  was  compounded  of  wholly  different  elements  from 
the  power  exercised  by  any  "Boss."  It  was  compounded  of 
somewhat  different  elements  from  the  power  exercised  by  any 
President  or  Governor.  The  analogy  which  most  nearly  fits 
Mr.  Hanna's  position  is  that  of  a  Prime  Minister,  who  is  respon- 
sible to  an  Executive  Chief,  while  at  the  same  time  dependent 
for  the  success  of  his  administration  upon  the  confidence  and 
support  of  a  majority  in  the  Legislature.  The  power  exer- 
cised by  Mr.  Hanna  was  coming  to  resemble  in  a  rough,  tenta- 
tive, wholly  unofficial  way,  that  of  a  German  Imperial  Chan- 
cellor. 

I  have  reserved  until  the  last  the  most  conspicuous  illustra- 
tion of  his  effective  participation  in  the  legislative  action  of  the 
session  of  1901-1902.  All  of  Senator  Hanna's  minor  speeches  and 
achievements  are  overshadowed  by  the  speech  he  made  on 
June  5  and  6, 1902,  upon  the  Panama  Canal,  and  by  the  influence 
which  that  speech  exerted  upon  the  final  action  of  the  Senate 
and  eventually  of  the  House  of  Representatives.  The  intrinsic 
advantages  of  the  Panama  over  the  Nicaragua  route  were  such 
that  possibly  the  former  would  eventually  have  been  selected 
in  any  event;  but  unquestionably  the  actual  adoption  of  the 
Panama  route  by  the  fifty-seventh  Congress  was  due  to  Mark 
Hanna  far  more  than  to  any  other  one  man. 

Owing  to  a  series  of  historical  accidents  the  Nicaraguan 
route  had  come  to  be  traditionally  considered  as  the  American 
route.  Partly  because  American  diplomats  and  promoters 
had  been  more  successful  in  securing  concessions  from  Nica- 
ragua and  Costa  Rica  and  partly  because  American  engineers 
had  evinced  a  partiality  for  the  northern  route,  the  majority 
of  American  citizens  accepted  as  a  matter  of  course  the  idea 
that  any  canal  built  by  the  government  of  the  United  States 
or  its  citizens  would  be  situated  in  Nicaragua.  The  first  Inter- 
oceanic  Canal  Commission  which  made  an  exhaustive  investi- 
gation, had  reported  in  1876  unanimously  in  favor  of  a  Nica- 
raguan canal;  and  in  all  probability  had  it  not  been  for  the 
Clayton-Bulwer  Treaty  the  construction  of  such  a  canal  would 


THE    PANAMA   CANAL  377 

have  been  undertaken  at  a  much  earlier  date  either  by  the  gov- 
ernment of  the  United  States  or  by  an  American  corporation 
under  government  assistance. 

The  beginning  in  1881  of  the  construction  of  a  canal  across 
the  Isthmus  of  Panama  by  a  French  company  put  an  end  tem- 
porarily to  the  agitation  for  a  canal  built  and  operated  under 
American  influence.  Nothing  could  be  done  until  the  French 
experiment  had  been  tried  and  its  results  known.  Not  until 
the  French  company  went  into  bankruptcy  in  1888  was  any 
alternative  enterprise  considered;  but  when  the  French  ex- 
periment did  fail,  it  was  inevitable  that  the  Nicaraguan  project 
should  be  revived  and  pushed  with  unprecedented  vigor. 
Thoughtful  Americans  became  more  than  ever  convinced  that 
any  interoceanic  canal  should  be  controlled  by  this  country. 
And  apparently  a  canal  controlled  by  this  country  would  have 
to  be  built  in  Nicaragua.  The  ruins  of  the  French  enterprise 
blocked  the  path  across  Panama  —  even  if  the  government  of 
the  United  States  or  any  group  of  its  citizens  had  desired  to 
take  it.  In  February,  1889,  Congress  passed  a  bill  incorporating 
the  Maritime  Canal  Co.,  of  the  United  States,  which  was  or- 
ganized a  few  months  later  and  which  raised  some  $6,000,000 
with  which  to  begin  construction.  During  the  next  three  years 
a  good  deal  of  work  was  accomplished  with  this  money;  but 
the  panic  of  1893  dried  up  the  springs  of  capital  and  in  that  year 
the  American  company  also  went  into  the  hands  of  a  receiver. 
It  could  not  resume  work  without  the  aid  of  the  government, 
and  although  a  considerable  party  in  Congress  was  in  favor  of 
guaranteeing  the  company's  bonds  for  a  large  sum,  a  bill  pro- 
viding for  such  a  guarantee  never  did  more  than  pass  the  Senate. 
Congress  frequently  discussed  the  matter  during  the  next  few 
years,  and  many  bills  providing  for  the  construction  of  the 
canal  by  the  nation  were  considered,  but  no  action  was  taken. 
All  that  Congress  did  during  these  years  was  to  constitute  in 
1897  another  Isthmian  Canal  Commission,  headed  by  Rear 
Admiral  John  G.  Walker,  and  to  appropriate  $300,000  for  the 
expenses  of  further  investigation.  In  the  meantime  the  con- 
cession of  the  Maritime  Canal  Co.  expired  and  was  extended 
for  a  short  period  only  with  difficulty. 

Manifestly,  however,  the   actual   construction  of  the  canal 


378      MARCUS    ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND    WORK 

could  not  be  much  longer  delayed.  The  Spanish- American  War 
had  given  a  convincing  object  lesson  of  the  embarrassments 
to  American  naval  strategy  and  defence  which  resulted  from 
the  possession  of  two  coast  lines  so  remote  one  from  the  other. 
The  growing  commerce  of  the  country  with  China  and  South 
America  demanded  an  isthmian  waterway.  Public  opinion 
was  almost  unanimous  that  some  action  be  taken;  but  the 
more  cautious  among  the  Republican  leaders,  including  Presi- 
dent McKinley,  did  not  want  to  act  without  full  information 
and  indubitable  legal  guarantees  against  future  embarrass- 
ments. The  appointment  of  the  final  Canal  Commission  was 
the  result  of  this  determination.  The  Commission  of  1897  had 
presented  a  report  which  unanimously  and  emphatically  de- 
cided in  favor  of  the  practicability  and  desirability  of  the  Nica- 
raguan  route.  The  Senate  passed  a  bill  providing  for  the  con- 
struction of  a  Nicaraguan  Canal  by  the  national  government  ; 
but  Speaker  Reed  prevented  it  from  being  adopted  by  the  House. 
The  Panama  route  had  a  few  able  advocates,  the  result  being 
that  on  the  last  day  of  the  short  session  of  1898-1899,  the  Presi- 
dent was  authorized  to  send  still  another  Commission  to  inves- 
tigate both  routes,  and  an  appropriation  of  $1,000,000  was  made 
to  pay  the  expense  of  the  investigation. 

Apparently  President  McKinley  had  by  this  time  become 
doubtful  whether  the  country  should  commit  itself  irrevocably 
to  a  Nicaraguan  canal.  He  had  listened  to  the  arguments  in 
favor  of  Panama  presented  by  William  Nelson  Cromwell,  the 
legal  representative  in  the  United  States  of  the  new  Panama 
Canal  Co.,  and  he  had  also  asked  Mr.  Hanna  to  listen  to  Mr. 
Cromwell's  pleading.  It  was  owing  to  his  advice  that  the  Re- 
publican platform  of  1900  pledged  the  party  to  the  construction 
of  an  isthmian  canal  rather  than  a  canal  specifically  situated  in 
Nicaragua.  In  the  meanwhile,  he  was  seeking  in  good  faith 
to  remove  the  obstacles  preventing  the  construction  of  a  na- 
tional canal  by  negotiating  with  Great  Britain  for  the  amend- 
ment of  the  Clayton-Bulwer  Treaty.  An  agreement  was 
reached  with  the  English  government,  but  the  new  treaty  was 
rejected  by  the  Senate,  andnot  until  late  in  1901  was  an  acceptable 
arrangement  consummated  with  Great  Britain — one  which 
enabled  the  United  States  to  construct  an  isthmian  canal  on 


THE   PANAMA   CANAL  379 

fair  terms.  A  large  proportion  of  the  members  of  both  Houses 
had  wished  to  go  ahead  and  build  a  canal  without  waiting  for 
the  signature  of  a  new  treaty,  but  fortunately  the  policy  of  the 
country  was  controlled  by  the  wiser  half  of  Congress.  The 
final  removal  of  all  legal  obstacles  made  it  inevitable  that  some 
decisive  action  would  be  taken  during  the  long  session  of  1901- 
1902. 

Early  in  January,  1902,  a  decision  by  Congress  in  favor  of  a 
,  Nicaraguan  canal  looked  inevitable.  The  third  Canal  Com- 
mission, after  an  exhaustive  investigation,  had  submitted  its  re- 
port in  December,  1900.  It  recommended  the  construction  of 
a  canal  along  the  northern  route,  because,  but  only  because, 
of  the  apparent  impossibility  of  buying  from  the  French  com- 
pany its  property  and  franchises  in  Panama  at  anything  like 
a  fair  price.  A  canal  at  Panama  would  cost  about  $60,000,000 
less  than  one  farther  north,  and  it  would  be  shorter,  have  fewer 
locks  and  slighter  curvature.  It  was  to  be  preferred  for  en- 
gineering reasons ;  but  even  though  more  expensive,  the  Nica- 
raguan canal  was  entirely  practicable,  and,  considering  the 
attitude  of  the  French  company,  was  the  better  selection.  The 
practical  effect  of  this  report  was  to  strengthen  the  hands  of  the 
friends  of  a  Nicaraguan  canal,  while  it  made  the  directors  of 
the  French  company  understand  that  they  must  either  offer 
reasonable  terms  or  else  lose  practically  the  whole  French 
investment  in  Panama. 

The  consequence  was  that  after  protracted  negotiations  and 
much  backing  and  filling  the  French  company  offered  on  Jan. 
4, 1902,  to  sell  its  property  to  the  United  States  for  $40,000,000, 
which  brought  the  total  estimated  cost  of  the  Panama 
Canal  to  a  smaller  figure  than  the  total  estimated  cost  of  the 
Nicaraguan  canal.  In  view  of  this  offer  the  Commission  re- 
versed its  former  decision  and  reported  on  January  18  in  favor 
of  the  adoption  of  the  Panama  route.  Before  this  final  report 
was  submitted,  however,  the  House  of  Representatives  had 
passed  a  bill,  introduced  by  Mr.  Hepburn,  authorizing  the 
President  to  proceed  with  the  construction  of  a  canal  at  Nica- 
ragua, at  a  cost  of  $180,000,000  and  appropriating  $10,000,000 
on  account  for  immediate  use.  An  amendment  had  been  pro- 
posed, leaving  the  choice  of  routes  to  the  discretion  of  the  Presi- 


380      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

dent,  but  it  had  been  rejected  by  a  vote  of  120  to  170.  The 
House  was  almost  unanimously  in  favor  of  this  Hepburn  Bill. 
As  finally  passed,  there  had  been  308  votes  in  its  favor  against 
only  2  in  opposition. 

I  have  been  obliged  to  tell  at  some  length  the  foregoing  story 
in  order  to  explain  the  situation  which  confronted  the  Senate 
when  in  January,  1902,  it  began  the  consideration  of  the  canal 
problem.  With  its  usual  deliberation  the  Senate  decided  to 
postpone  action  until  a  thorough  investigation  had  been  made 
by  the  Interoceanic  Canal  Committee.  The  House  had  acted 
hastily,  and  the  final  recommendation  of  the  Canal  Com- 
mission in  favor  of  Panama  placed  the  matter  in  an  entirely 
different  light.  For  two  months  the  Committee  on  Inter- 
oceanic  Canals  took  testimony,  and  about  the  middle  of  March 
decided  by  a  vote  of  7  to  4  to  report  in  favor  of  the  passage  of  the 
Hepburn  Bill  unamended.  The  minority,  however,  submitted 
a  report  of  its  own,  in  which  a  strong  argument  was  made  in 
favor  of  the  Panama  route.  Senator  Hanna  was  the  instigator 
of  this  minority  report,  and  thereafter  he  became  the  leader 
in  the  Senate  of  the  pro-Panama  party. 

The  subject  was  one  which  would  have  naturally  aroused 
a  lively  interest  in  his  mind.  The  United  States  was  confronted 
with  the  necessity  of  deciding  what  was  substantially  a  great 
business  question  —  the  greatest,  perhaps,  in  its  history.  The 
question  ought  to  be  decided  one  way  or  the  other  chiefly  on 
business  grounds,  although  the  business  was  chiefly  technical 
in  its  nature.  He  was  familiar  from  his  own  experience  with 
many  of  the  technical  problems  which  were  raised  by  the  com- 
parative advantages  and  disadvantages  of  the  two  routes.  As 
he  himself  said  in  the  Senate:  "I  have  felt  an  interest  in  this 
question  because  it  was  a  practical  one.  The  operation  of 
canals  was  one  of  the  few  subjects  with  which  in  my  business 
life  I  had  become  acquainted  from  experience  in  all  directions. 
When  the  Panama  route  was  called  to  my  attention  by  Presi- 
dent McKinley  himself,  I  was  asked  by  him  to  give  it  my  per- 
sonal attention.  He  made  the  further  request  that  I  should  go 
on  the  Committee  on  Interoceanic  Canals,  that  he  might  have 
the  benefit  of  my  experience  and  advice."  Everything  con- 
spired, consequently,  to  fasten  his  interest  on  the  problem  and 


THE   PANAMA   CANAL  381 

to  make  him  very  competent  to  deal  with  it.  He  had  insti- 
tuted an  independent  and  very  careful  investigation  of  his  own, 
and  some  time  in  1901  reached  a  conclusion  in  favor  of  the 
Panama  route. 

Just  when  Senator  Hanna  became  convinced  that  the  govern- 
ment would  be  making  a  grave  mistake,  in  case  the  Nicaraguan 
route  was  adopted,  I  am  not  sure;  but  a  visit,  which  M. 
Philippe  Bunau-Varilla  made  to  the  United  States  early  in  1901 
had  something  to  do  with  it.  M.  Bunau-Varilla  had  been  chief 
engineer  in  charge  of  the  work  undertaken  by  the  new  French 
company  and  was  peculiarly  qualified  both  by  his  standing 
in  his  profession  and  by  his  practical  experience  in  the  work 
of  construction  at  Panama  to  pass  an  authoritative  opinion 
upon  the  comparative  advantages  of  the  two  routes.  He  had 
been  induced  to  come  to  the  United  States  by  a  group  of  Cin- 
cinnati business  men,  whom  he  met  by  accident  in  Paris  during 
the  Exposition  of  1900,  and  whom  he  had  convinced  of  the  su- 
periority of  Panama.  The  visit  was  made  for  the  purpose  of 
addressing  various  commercial  associations  in  the  United  States 
on  behalf  of  Panama,  and  wherever  he  spoke  he  left  behind  him 
a  trail  of  converts.  Among  them  was  Colonel  Myron  T.  Herrick, 
whose  interest  was  so  much  aroused  that  he  made  a  point  of 
introducing  M.  Bunau-Varilla  to  Senator  Hanna.  A  series  of 
interviews  followed,  which  had  much  to  do  with  Mr.  Banna's 
decision  to  make  a  fight  on  behalf  of  Panama.  This  decision 
had  been  reached  by  the  Senator  before  the  Canal  Commission 
finally  reported  in  favor  of  Panama. 

However  much  Mr.  Hanna  may  have  been  influenced  by  the 
arguments  of  other  men,  he  did  not  allow  himself  to  be  convinced 
without  making  an  exhaustive  investigation  of  his  own  —  the 
same  sort  of  an  investigation  which  a  responsible  Minister 
would  have  made  before  submitting  to  a  legislative  body  some 
important  plan  of  legislation.  He  read  all  the  available  books 
on  the  subject  and  studied  the  surveys  and  plans.  He  sent  for 
a  number  of  men  who  had  been  over  the  ground,  and  listened 
to  what  they  had  to  say.  He  consulted  not  merely  engineers, 
but  practical  navigators  —  the  captains  in  charge  of  large  ocean- 
going vessels ;  and  in  this  aspect  of  the  inquiry  he  was  helped 
by  his  personal  association  with  the  large  American  maritime 


382      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

interests.  The  further  he  pushed  the  investigation,  the  more 
convinced  he  became.  He  was  dealing  for  the  most  part  with 
a  group  of  technical  facts,  the  bearing  and  weight  of  which  his 
practical  experience  had  fully  equipped  him  to  estimate;  and 
although  he  was  not  an  engineer  his  final  decision  was  in  every 
essential  respect  that  of  an  expert.  No  better  example  could 
be  given  of  his  ability  to  qualify  himself  for  an  important  job 
by  careful  preparation.  In  order  to  make  his  own  decision 
prevail  he  needed  to  be  an  authority,  and  an  authority  he  be- 
came. 

The  fight  was  begun  in  the  Committee.  Throughout  the 
hearings,  during  which  several  volumes  of  testimony  was  taken, 
Mr.  Hanna  was  constantly  putting  questions  to  the  witnesses, — 
particularly  the  members  of  the  Canal  Commission,  —  in  order 
to  bring  out  their  emphatic  preference  on  engineering  grounds 
for  the  Panama  route  —  his  object  being  to  prepare  the  mind  of 
the  Senators,  who  might  read  the  testimony,  for  more  light. 
The  Committee  itself  he  did  not  expect  to  convince.  Its 
Chairman  was  Senator  Morgan,  long  the  most  determined 
advocate  of  a  Nicaraguan  canal,  and  the  majority  of  its  mem- 
bers were  already  publicly  committed  in  its  favor.  The  real 
fight  was  made  on  the  floor  of  the  Senate,  where  Mr.  Hanna 
as  well  as  other  able  Senators  were  using  all  their  personal  in- 
fluence to  convert  their  colleagues  to  Panama.  After  a  while 
they  felt  strong  enough  to  take  the  aggressive.  Senator  Spooner 
offered  an  amendment  to  the  Hepburn  Bill  which  left  nothing 
of  the  House  measure  except  its  enacting  clause.  It  authorized 
the  President  to  purchase  the  franchises  and  property  of  the 
French  company  for  not  more  than  $40,000,000,  to  secure  by 
treaty  with  Colombia  a  canal  zone  and  then  to  proceed  with  the 
construction  of  the  canal.  But  he  was  also  authorized  to  fall 
back  on  the  Nicaraguan  route  —  in  case  he  could  not  make  a 
satisfactory  bargain  with  the  French  company  or  Colombia. 
This  amendment  was  the  idea  and  work  of  Senator  Spooner, 
and  its  submission  to  the  Senate  was  good  tactics.  It  placed 
the  advocates  of  the  Nicaraguan  canal  where,  considering  the 
weight  of  expert  testimony,  they  ought  to  be  placed  —  that  is, 
on  the  defensive. 

The  most  important  speech  in  favor  of  the  Spooner  amend- 


THE    PANAMA   CANAL  383 

ment  was  made  by  Senator  Hanna  on  June  5  and  6.  He  had 
carefully  prepared  the  material  for  this  utterance,  but  not  a 
word  of  its  actual  text.  He  had  before  him  two  sheets  of  paper, 
containing  twelve  or  fifteen  lines  of  writing  on  each;  and  the 
majority  of  these  memoranda  were  not  even  subject  headings. 
They  were  merely  references  to  the  page  numbers  of  reports 
and  the  like.  His  secretary  sat  behind,  ready  with  some  fifteen 
books  and  pamphlets,  quotations  from  which  the  speaker  in- 
tended to  use.  Backed  up  by  this  material  he  talked  to  the 
whole  Senate  just  as  he  had  already  talked  to  many  Senators 
in  person  —  explaining  in  a  conversational  way  the  reasons 
which  made  the  Panama  route  more  desirable.  He  spoke  on 
the  first  day  for  over  two  hours,  until  his  knees  gave  out, 
and  on  the  day  following  he  concluded  with  a  somewhat  shorter 
additional  argument.  On  June  18,  the  day  before  the  vote  was 
taken,  he  supplemented  his  first  speech  with  a  brief  but  very 
cogent  plea  for  the  Panama  route. 

A  reading  of  Senator  Hanna's  Panama  speech  is  sufficient 
to  account  for  its  remarkable  effect.  It  is  at  once  unmistak- 
ably sincere  and  really  authoritative.  With  one  exception  he 
did  not  and  could  not  advance  any  novel  arguments  in  favor  of 
Panama  —  although  that  exception  is  very  important.  It  con- 
sisted of  a  large  number  of  letters  from  the  sailing  masters 
of  ocean-going  ships,  which  he  had  solicited  and  obtained,  and 
which  testified  unanimously  and  emphatically  to  the  supe- 
riority of  the  shorter  and  straighter  Panama  Canal  from  the 
point  of  view  of  a  practical  navigator.  But  for  the  most  part 
he  could  only  repeat  arguments  which  had  already  been  ad- 
vanced by  engineers.  What  he  did  do  was  to  present  these 
arguments  skilfully,  to  bring  out  and  emphasize  the  sub- 
stantially unanimous  consensus  of  engineering  authority  on 
one  side,  and  to  discuss  lucidly  those  phases  of  the  subject 
with  which  his  own  experience  had  made  him  familiar.  Senator 
Hanna's  speech,  as  compared  with  the  many  long  and  dreary 
harangues  which  had  been  delivered  in  the  Senate  during  the 
years  of  discussion  of  an  interoceanic  canal,  produces  a  veri- 
table sensation  of  candor,  relevance,  personal  knowledge  and 
reality. 

The  speech  obtained  an  enormous  success.  .His  friends  all 


384      MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

congratulated  him,  and  hundreds  of  copies  were  demanded  of 
him  as  soon  as  it  was  printed  in  the  Record.  Senator  Orville 
Platt,  a  man  of  some  experience,  said  that  it  was  the  most  effec- 
tive address  which  had  been  made  in  the  Senate  during  his 
career.  All  observers  testify  that  it  actually  changed  votes. 
Up  to  the  time  of  its  delivery  the  outlook  was  very  dubious. 
Thereafter  the  prospect  of  a  favorable  vote  very  much  improved. 
Senator  Frye  states  that  after  a  lifelong  public  advocacy  of  the 
Nicaragua  route,  Mr.  Hanna  converted  him  to  its  rival.  He 
told  his  friend  that  he  was  voting  not  for  a  Panama  but  for  a 
Hannama  canal.  He  asserted  emphatically  that  Mr.  Hanna,  far 
more  than  any  other  single  man,  was  responsible  for  the  con- 
version of  Congress  and  the  country  to  Panama.  It  is  almost 
unnecessary  to  add  that  the  public  speech  was  supplemented 
by  vigorous  private  canvassing.  The  opinion  of  every  Senator 
was  learned,  and  wherever  any  chance  of  conversion  existed, 
the  argument  was  pushed  home  either  by  Senator  Hanna  him- 
self or  by  some  assistant,  such  as  Senator  Kittridge.  The  cam- 
paign for  a  successful  vote  was  planned  as  carefully  as  was  the 
campaign  preceding  an  important  popular  election. 

In  his  "Four  Centuries  of  the  Panama  Canal"  Mr.  Willis 
Fletcher  Johnson  says  (p.  128):  "The  result  was  generally  re- 
garded as  doubtful  until  the  vote  was  actually  taken.  That 
incident  occurred  on  June  19,  1902,  when  the  measure  [the 
Spooner  amendment]  was  adopted  by  the  overwhelming  vote 
of  sixty-seven  to  six."  This  is  misleading.  The  final  vote  did 
stand  sixty-seven  to  six;  but  the  comparative  strength  of  the 
two  parties  had  in  the  meantime  been  tested  by  a  series  of 
preliminary  votes  on  various  attempts  to  emasculate  or  modify 
the  Spooner  amendment.  When  these  votes  involved  a  deci- 
sive question,  Panama  usually  won  by  about  forty-two  to  thirty- 
four.  The  minority  was  composed  for  the  most  part  of  Demo- 
crats, but  included  such  Republican  Senators  as  Clapp,  Hawley, 
Nelson,  Penrose,  Thomas  Platt  and  Quay.  On  the  other  hand 
some  half  a  dozen  Democrats  voted  with  the  majority.  The 
overwhelming  final  vote  merely  meant  that,  after  being  beaten, 
the  Senators  in  favor  of  Nicaragua  did  not  want  to  go  on  record 
against  some  kind  of  a  canal.  But  a  change  of  four  votes 
would  a  few  minutes  earlier  have  at  least  temporarily  defeated 


THE    PANAMA   CANAL  385 

the  Spooner  amendment.  The  House  of  Representatives  cheer- 
fully agreed  to  the  action  of  the  Senate,  and  public  opinion,  which 
a  few  months  before  had  not  seriously  considered  Panama, 
accepted  the  decision  without  question.  Neither  has  any 
doubt  since  been  raised  that  the  selection  of  the  southern  route 
saved  the  government  from  committing  a  grave  error  and 
sustaining  a  severe  loss. 

The  incident  constituted  the  most  conspicuous  single  illus- 
tration of  Senator  Hanna's  personal  prestige.  In  this  as  in 
so  many  other  cases  he  succeeded  in  decisively  influencing  the 
course  of  public  policy  because  he  deserved  to  succeed.  Like 
other  Americans  he  himself  had  first  been  predisposed  in  favor 
of  Nicaragua;  but  his  mind  was  open  and  his  predisposition 
did  not  prevent  him  from  making  a  thorough  study  of  the  ques- 
tion and  reaching  a  proper  conclusion.  Once  having  done  so, 
he  carefully  and  deliberately  qualified  himself  to  convert 
Congress  to  his  own  decision.  That  was  what  he  intended  to 
do  and  that  was  what  he  did.  He  succeeded  in  doing  it,  not 
merely  because  he  had  mastered  the  subject  and  could  speak 
with  authority,  but  because  his  personality  itself  inspired  con- 
fidence. On  no  other  occasion  did  he  exhibit  so  clearly  and 
effectively  in  public  the  quality  and  the  power,  which  account 
for  his  influence  in  private  over  his  friends  and  associates.  His 
Senatorial  colleagues  had  come  to  trust  in  his  personal  good 
faith;  and  this  trust  permitted  him  to  exert  a  decisive  influ- 
ence on  a  question  which,  momentous  as  it  was,  had  not  become 
seriously  entangled  in  party  politics  and  did  not  arouse  sec- 
tional or  class  interests.  The  comparatively  open  mind  which 
Senators  and  Congressmen  brought  to  the  consideration  of  the 
question  offered  an  opportunity  for  an  earnest  and  competent 
and  trustworthy  man  to  impose  his  selection  on  a  sufficient 
number  of  his  colleagues.  Mark  Hanna  had  made  himself 
the  man  to  seize  the  opportunity,  and  his  country  may  well 
thank  him,  not  only  for  what  he  did,  but  for  being  the  kind  of 
man  who  could  do  it. 


2c 


CHAPTER  XXV 

THE  CIVIC  FEDERATION  AND  THE  LABOR  PROBLEM 

IN  the  foregoing  chapter  we  have  seen  that  Senator  Hanna's 
increasing  personal  power  in  and  outside  of  Congress  had 
brought  with  it  a  higher  and  broader  sense  of  responsibility. 
The  limitations  which  he  had  imposed  upon  his  early  behavior 
in  the  Senate  were  abandoned.  He  began  to  interfere  in  the 
discussion  of  a  far  larger  range  of  public  questions ;  and  when- 
ever he  interfered  he  advocated  not  a  sectional  or  a  class,  but 
what  he  believed  to  be  a  national,  policy.  He  was  no  longer 
the  representative  to  the  same  extent  of  merely  a  business  inter- 
est in  politics.  He  proposed  to  represent  the  whole  country, 
and  his  power  could  not  have  increased  as  it  did  unless  an  in- 
creasing number  of  people  had  been  convinced  of  the  good  faith 
of  his  intentions  and  his  peculiar  ability  to  make  them  good. 

It  is  by  no  means  accidental,  consequently,  that  just  when 
his  personal  political  power  was  becoming  nationalized  in  its 
expression,  he  became  vitally  interested  in  the  better  solution 
of  the  most  critical  national  economic  problem  —  the  problem, 
that  is,  of  the  relation  between  capital  and  labor.  This  problem 
was  fundamental  from  Senator  Hanna's  point  of  view,  because 
all  his  economic  ideas  were  based  upon  his  personal  experience 
as  a  productive  agent  and  his  political  experience  as  the  repre- 
sentative of  certain  productive  agencies  in  American  society. 
The  equitable  distribution  and  the  abundant  consumption  of 
the  economic  product  were  supposed  to  take  care  of  themselves 
—  provided  the  productive  agencies  could  be  made  to  work  effi- 
ciently, actively  and  harmoniously.  He  had  in  his  own  opinion 
contributed  effectively  to  their  active  and  efficient  operation 
by  helping  to  protect  them  against  injurious  political  agitation  ; 
but  the  plain  fact  was  that  they  did  not  work  harmoniously. 
Capital  and  labor  were  in  a  condition  of  more  or  less  constant 
warfare ;  and  this  warfare  diminished  the  efficiency  of  the  pro- 

386 


THE  CIVIC  FEDERATION  AND  THE  LABOR  PROBLEM   387 

ductive  organization  and  constituted  a  threat  to  political  secur- 
ity and  social  integrity.  The  temporary  subsidence  of  the 
agitation  against  business  only  brought  into  sharper  relief  this 
fundamental  discrepancy  in  his  whole  scheme  of  American  eco- 
nomic salvation. 

He  had,  moreover,  other  and  more  personal  reasons  to  be 
interested  in  the  warfare  between  capital  and  labor.  The  one 
serious  dispute  in  which  he  had  been  engaged  with  his  own 
employees  had  made  an  indelible  impression  on  him.  The 
bloodshed,  the  violence  and  the  resulting  spirit  of  suspicion 
and  hatred  seemed  to  him  as  unnecessary  as  it  was  deplorable 
and  repellent  to  the  American  tradition  of  fair  dealing  among 
individuals  and  classes.  The  experience  had  profoundly  in- 
fluenced his  subsequent  attitude  towards  his  own  employees. 
It  was  at  the  root  of  his  determination  to  keep  personally  in 
touch  with  them,  so  that  he  could  know  and  understand  their 
grievances  and  so  that  they  could  actually  see  his  good  faith  in  his 
eyes  and  in  his  manner  as  well  as  in  his  deeds.  In  spite,  however, 
of  his  fair  and  generous  treatment  of  his  employees  and  of  their 
loyalty  towards  him,  he  had  been  denounced  as  a  labor-crusher  ; 
and  this  had  been  done  apparently  for  no  better  reason  than 
that,  as  a  successful  business  man,  he  must  have  oppressed  his 
men.  He  answered  the  attack  vigorously  and  convincingly; 
but  the  ominous  cloud  which  had  descended  upon  his  political 
career  merely  because  he  had  been  a  large  employer  of  labor 
forced  upon  his  attention  the  very  practical  question:  Why 
should  he  have  been  charged  with  being  a  labor-crusher  when 
there  was  not  the  slightest  evidence  that  he  had  been  anything 
but  very  fair  and  generous  in  his  treatment  of  his  employees  ? 

He  sincerely  believed  that  the  policy  which  he  advocated 
of  unrestrained  business  stimulation  and  expansion  was  as  bene- 
ficial to  the  wage-earner  as  it  was  to  the  employer.  Prosperity 
meant  as  much  as  anything  else  the  full  dinner-pail.  Without 
business  activity  and  the  confident  investment  by  capitalists 
in  business  enterprises,  laborers'  wages  could  not  increase. 
Unless  labor  was  efficient  and  steady,  the  economic  value  of 
capital  was  very  much  impaired.  All  sorts  of  arguments  could 
be  used  to  prove  the  identity  of  the  interests  of  employer  and 
employee  "in  the  long  run";  but  the  fact  remained  that  the 


388       MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

two  always  had  quarrelled  about  the  division  of  the  product 
and  were  still  quarelling.  As  a  severely  practical  political 
economist  Mr.  Hanna  could  not  be  satisfied  with  results  "in 
the  long  run."  Big  strikes,  particularly  about  wages,  were 
very  embarrassing  to  a  political  leader  who  was  trying  to  con- 
vince the  mass  of  the  people  that  they  were  bound  to  get  their 
full  share  of  the  fruits  of  prosperity.  If  his  political  system 
was  to  prevail,  the  ultimate  identity  of  interests  must  somehow 
be  made  more  immediate ;  and  it  became  in  a  sense  his  duty  to 
make  it  immediately  effective.  As  a  joint  result,  consequently, 
of  his  politico-economic  system  and  his  increasing  personal 
prominence  and  responsibility,  he  was  being  driven  to  take  an 
active  interest  in  the  settlement  of  labor  disputes ;  and  during 
1901  it  so  happened  that  an  instrument  was  placed  in  his  hand 
which  enabled  him  to  give  systematic  practical  expression  to 
this  interest. 

In  1893  there  had  been  organized  in  Chicago  a  Civic  Federa- 
tion, the  purpose  of  which  was  to  gather  together  people  of  all 
classes  and  interests  for  the  purpose  of  investigating  and  dis- 
cussing various  questions  of  public  policy.  One  of  its  chief 
objects  was  to  bring  to  the  investigation  and  discussion  of  these 
questions  contributions  from  men  who  were  dealing  with  them 
in  a  very  practical  way  and  from  radically  different  points  of 
view.  The  idea  met  with  success,  and  as  the  conferences 
increased  in  size  the  Federation  found  imperceptibly  its  work 
and  its  membership  becoming  more  than  local.  It  had  en- 
gineered conferences  on  combinations  and  trusts  and  on  the 
reform  of  primaries,  to  which  people  from  all  over  the  country 
were  invited;  and  finally  in  June,  1900,  it  changed  its  name  to 
the  National  Civic  Federation.  Senator  Hanna's  attention 
had  been  called  to  the  organization  before  and  during  the  cam- 
paign of  1900.  The  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  Mr.  Lyman  G. 
Gage,  was  an  honorary  President  of  the  Federation  and  took 
a  lively  interest  in  its  work  and  welfare.  He  introduced  its 
Secretary,  Mr.  Ralph  M.  Easley,  to  President  McKinley  and 
Senator  Hanna  with  the  express  object  of  having  the  purposes 
of  the  Federation  explained  to  them.  Mr.  Hanna  was  not, 
however,  at  that  juncture  likely  to  be  interested  in  a  discussion 
club  —  no  matter  how  intelligently  conducted.  The  campaign 


THE   CIVIC    FEDERATION    AND    THE    LABOR    PROBLEM      389 

was  ahead  of  him.  His  attention  was  fastened  on  a  little  voting 
club  —  called  the  Electoral  College.  So  the  Secretary  failed  to 
arouse  his  interest,  and  the  Federation  probably  looked  to  him 
merely  like  a  body  of  conversational  reformers. 

During  the  following  summer  the  strike  among  the  anthra- 
cite coal  miners  raised  the  labor  question  in  an  acute  form,  and 
that  question  became  the  subject  of  first  conference  of  the  Fed- 
eration as  a  national  body.  An  Industrial  Arbitration  Depart- 
ment was  formed,  which  subsequently  assumed  the  better  name 
of  the  Department  of  Conciliation  and  Arbitration.  Little  by 
little  this  department  waxed  in  importance.  Its  work  and  the 
classes  of  men  interested  in  it  broadened.  Besides  many  promi- 
nent business  men,  a  number  of  even  more  prominent  labor 
leaders  joined  the  Federation  and  became  active  in  the  Concilia- 
tion Department.  Mr.  Samuel  Gompers,  President  of  the 
American  Federation  of  Labor,  was  a  member  of  the  Executive 
Council.  John  Mitchell,  President  of  the  United  Mine  Workers 
of  America,  and  Dan  J.  Keefe,  President  of  the  International 
Longshoremen,  Marine  and  Transport  Workers*  Association, 
were  closely  associated  with  the  work.  The  department  had 
quickly  grown  to  be  a  really  efficient  agency  for  the  better  asso- 
ciation of  business  men  with  union  leaders  and  economic  ex- 
perts. 

In  December,  1900,  an  increase  of  the  arbitration  committee 
was  considered  desirable.  Mr.  Easley  asked  Dan  J.  Keefe 
what  employers  on  the  Lakes  his  union  dealt  with  largely,  and 
found  fair  in  their  general  attitude  and  behavior.  He  men- 
tioned several,  but  added  that  Daniel  R.  Hanna,  Senator 
Hanna's  son  and  a  member  of  the  firm  of  M.  A.  Hanna  &  Co., 
was  the  fairest  of  them  all.  The  Secretary  shied  away  from 
the  suggestion.  He  feared  that  any  prominent  association  of 
the  name  of  Hanna  with  the  Federation  would  arouse  political 
prejudices  and  hurt  its  proper  work.  The  next  day  the  Arbitra- 
tion Committee  met,  with  Mr.  A.  C.  Bartlett  in  the  chair.  When 
the  question  of  increasing  the  membership  of  the  committee 
came  up,  Mr.  Easley  stated  with  reluctance  that  the  name  of 
Daniel  R.  Hanna,  Chairman  of  the  Dock  Managers'  Associa- 
tion, had  been  suggested,  and  awaited  an  explosion.  But  no  ex- 
plosion followed.  George  Shelling,  a  labor  union  man,  a  cooper 


390       MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS  LIFE   AND   WORK 

by  trade  and  a  Commissioner  of  Labor  under  former  Governor 
Altgeld  of  Illinois,  rose  and  said:  "There  is  no  more  radical 
Democrat  on  this  committee  than  I  am.  I  move  that  Daniel 
R.  Hanna  be  made  a  member  of  it.  I  know  from  what  Keefe 
said  he  is  all  right."  The  invitation  to  join  the  Committee  was 
issued  and  accepted.  The  firm  of  M.  A.  Hanna  &  Co.  had 
remained  true  to  its  traditional  policy  of  dealing  fairly  and 
generously  with  its  employees,  and  for  that  reason  one  of  the 
partners  was  naturally  suggested  as  a  member  of  a  general 
committee  on  conciliation  and  arbitration. 

Early  in  1901  the  Industrial  Department  found  itself  very 
much  in  need  of  Senator  Hanna's  help  in  order  to  deal  with  a 
difficult  dispute  in  the  anthracite  coal  trade.  We  have  already 
remarked  that  during  the  campaign  of  1900  Mr.  Hanna  used 
his  influence  with  the  coal  operators  to  settle  a  strike  which  was 
hurting  the  chances  of  Republican  success.  An  agreement  had 
been  made  which  expired  on  March  31,  1901,  but  this  agreement 
was  a  temporary  compromise  which  satisfied  neither  side.  The 
Union  had  voted  to  strike  on  April  1,  unless  a  more  satisfactory 
arrangement  could  be  made  with  its  employers.  The  Concilia- 
tion Committee  could  not  get  in  touch  with  the  operators  in 
order  to  make  an  attempt  at  adjustment;  and  remembering 
Senator  Hanna's  contribution  to  the  former  agreement,  they 
decided  to  ask  his  assistance.  They  were  warned  that  the  Sena- 
tor's interest  in  the  matter  might  not  be  as  keen  as  it  was  during 
the  campaign,  but  they  decided  to  take  the  chance.  Mr.  D.  R. 
Hanna  arranged  a  meeting  with  his  father.  Senator  Hanna 
responded  immediately.  He  went  to  New  York,  had  a  confer- 
ence with  Messrs.  Mitchell  and  Keefe  and  decided  to  place  the 
matter  before  Mr.  J.  P.  Morgan.  The  latter  turned  it  over  to 
President  Thomas  of  the  Erie  Railroad.  Senator  Hanna  ar- 
ranged a  meeting  between  Mr.  Thomas  and  Mitchell,  and  as  a 
result  of  this  conference,  an  agreement  was  reached  which  was 
to  run  until  April  1,  1902. 

During  his  visit  to  New  York  on  this  business,  the  plans  and 
purposes  of  the 'Conciliation  Committee  of  the  Civic  Federation 
were  explained  to  Senator  Hanna  and  immediately  aroused  his 
interest.  Its  program  was  based  upon  the  idea  that  the  great 
majority  of  strikes  might  be  averted,  provided  conferences 


THE    CIVIC   FEDERATION   AND   THE    LABOR   PROBLEM      391 

could  be  arranged,  grievances  and  demands  fully  discussed  and 
a  fair  compromise  embodied  in  some  kind  of  a  trade  agreement. 
Such  a  program  could  not  but  appeal  to  the  Senator.  They 
were  proposing  to  adapt  to  a  larger  field  the  methods  of  personal 
intercourse,  which  he  had  used  in  his  own  business  and  which 
had  proved  to  be  thoroughly  practicable.  Moreover,  he  could 
see  an  opportunity  for  effective  work  on  his  own  part.  The 
basis  of  his  power  was  personal  confidence  and  influence.  Could 
not  his  own  influence  be  effectively  used  in  order  to  bring  about 
these  necessary  and  fruitful  conferences  between  employer  and 
employee?  Later,  after  he  had  gone  to  Cleveland,  Messrs. 
Mitchell  and  Keefe  followed  him  thither,  and  spent  some  little 
time  in  explaining  more  in  detail  the  ideas  and  hopes  of  the 
Committee.  If  there  had  been  any  hesitation  left  in  the  Sena- 
tor's mind,  it  vanished.  He  not  only  approved,  but  would 
actively  and  cordially  cooperate.  "Boys,"  he  said,  "this  looks 
right  to  me.  I'll  do  anything  you  want." 

During  the  summer  of  1901  a  strike  occurred  in  some  of  the 
plants  of  the  newly  organized  United  States  Steel  Corporation. 
The  dispute  was  serious,  and  involved  both  fundamental  issues 
and  a  large  number  of  men.  The  Conciliation  Committee  of 
the  Civic  Federation  made  several  attempts  to  secure  confer- 
ences and  bring  about  an  agreement.  Mr.  Hanna  was  in- 
tensely interested.  Throughout  the  summer  the  strike  and  the 
means  taken  to  end  it  bulked  larger  than  any  single  subject  in 
his  correspondence.  After  many  failures  a  conference  was 
finally  arranged  between  President  Schwab  and  his  associates 
and  a  labor  committee,  consisting  of  Gompers,  Mitchell,  Sar- 
geant  and  others,  which  reached  an  agreement.  Mr.  Hanna 
had  much  to  do  with  the  arrangements  for  this  decisive  consul- 
tation, and  its  successful  result  convinced  him,  finally,  that 
the  Committee  of  the  Federation  was  working  with  immediately 
fruitful  methods.  During  the  fall  he  publicly  associated  him- 
self with  the  work. 

As  soon  as  Senator  Hanna  publicly  identified  himself  with  the 
Federation  and  its  work,  certain  influential  members  of  it, 
particularly  Messrs.  Mitchell  and  Keefe,  proposed  to  make  him 
Chairman  of  the  Industrial  Department.  The  suggestion 
provoked  lively  opposition.  Many  members  of  the  association 


392       MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

were  by  way  of  being  reformers,  and  did  not  approve  of  Mr. 
Hanna's  political  purposes  or  methods.  They  and  others  who 
personally  liked  the  Senator  were  afraid  that  the  Federation 
would  be  injured  by  the  political  prominence  of  the  proposed 
Chairman,  and  would  begin  to  look  like  an  annex  to  the  Repub- 
lican National  Committee.  The  late  Bishop  Potter,  who  had 
recently  joined  the  Federation,  was  particularly  vigorous  in  his 
opposition.  Nevertheless,  Mr.  Hanna  was  chosen,  and  no 
injurious  results  to  the  Federation  followed.  Public  opinion 
was  coming  to  place  a  fairer  estimate  on  Mr.  Hanna's  motives. 
The  tendency  of  editorial  comment  was  to  consider  the  Senator 
sincere  and  disinterested  in  assuming  responsibility  for  the  most 
important  branch  of  the  Federation's  work.  In  the  end  oppo- 
nents, such  as  the  late  Bishop  Potter,  admitted  their  error. 
He  said :  "Mr.  Hanna  has  grown  up  to  the  size  of  the  job." 

On  Dec.  16  and  17,  1901,  the  second  National  Confer- 
ence of  the  Federation  was  held  in  the  rooms  of  the  Board  of 
Trade  and  Transportation  in  New  York.  It  was  addressed 
by  a  number  of  the  most  prominent  and  representative  union 
officials  in  the  country,  and  by  the  heads  of  a  number  of  large 
corporations  and  employers'  associations.  In  all  of  these 
speeches  the  program  of  the  Federation  was  explicitly  and  cor- 
dially approved.  Mr.  Hanna  himself  made  a  short  speech, 
proclaiming  his  confidence  in  organized  labor,  his  complete 
approval  of  the  methods  of  the  Federation,  and  his  readiness 
to  place  his  own  services  at  the  disposal  of  the  Industrial  De- 
partment. The  meeting  was  a  great  success,  and  increased 
the  prestige  of  the  Federation.  Public  comment  was  wide- 
spread, and  approved  almost  without  a  dissenting  voice.  Sena- 
tor Hanna  was  made  Chairman  of  the  Executive  Committee, 
Samuel  Gompers,  first  Vice-Chairman,  Oscar  Straus,  second 
Vice-Chairman,  Charles  A.  Moore,  Treasurer,  and  Ralph  M. 
Easley,  Secretary.  The  membership  of  the  general  committee 
was  enlarged  to  forty,  one-third  of  whom  represented  the  unions, 
another  third  the  employers  and  their  associations  and  a  final 
third  the  "general  public."  Out  of  this  general  committee 
were  to  be  selected  special  committees  to  help  in  the  adjustment 
of  disputes  in  particular  trades. 

From  the  moment  this  committee  was  organized  under  its 


THE  CIVIC  FEDERATION  AND  THE  LABOR  PROBLEM  393 

new  leadership,  it  was  involved  in  an  effort  to  avoid  the  most 
serious  and  dangerous  American  industrial  dispute  since  the 
Pullman  strike  of  1894  —  viz.  a  disagreement  between  the  anthra- 
cite coal  operators  and  the  union  of  their  employees,  the  United 
Mine  Workers  of  America.  As  we  have  seen,  Senator  Hanna 
had  already  been  personally  interested  in  this  quarrel.  He  had 
temporarily  settled  the  strike  of  1900,  and  had  helped  to  pre- 
vent a  strike  from  taking  place  in  the  spring  of  1901.  But  the 
arrangement  was  limited  to  a  year,  and  it  was  not  to  be  made 
permanent,  unless  the  Union  proved  to  the  operators  that  it 
could  control  its  members.  In  October,  1901,  Mr.  Mitchell  and 
his  district  presidents  had  gone  to  New  York  in  order  to  have 
an  interview  with  President  Thomas  of  the  Erie  Road.  They 
wanted  to  discuss  mutual  grievances,  and  pave  the  way  for  a 
general  conference  at  a  later  date.  After  waiting  for  several 
weeks,  the  committee  was  finally  denied  even  a  hearing  by  Mr. 
Thomas  and  were  made  indignant  by  being  most  effectually 
snubbed.  Consequently,  Mr.  Hanna  was  called  up  in  Cleveland 
and  after  learning  the  facts  suggested  an  interview  between 
Secretary  Easley  of  the  Industrial  Committee  and  Mr.  Thomas, 
which  developed  nothing  but  the  expression  of  a  determination 
on  the  part  of  Mr.  Thomas  and  the  other  operators  not  to  have 
anything  to  do  with  the  Union.  It  was  a  question,  they  de- 
clared, whether  they  or  the  Union  should  control  their  business. 
Such  was  the  situation  at  the  time  of  the  National  Conference 
of  the  Federation. 

While  in  New  York  Senator  Hanna  investigated  the  difficulty 
and  found  the  operators  unanimous  and  determined  in  their 
resolution  to  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  Union  and  fully  pre- 
pared, if  necessary,  to  accept  the  consequences  of  a  fight  to  the 
finish.  Two  months  later,  although  he  could  not  secure  a  con- 
ference between  the  Union  leaders  and  the  operators,  he  did 
arrange  a  meeting  between  Mr.  Mitchell  and  Mr.  J.  P.  Morgan. 
The  interview  was  inconclusive.  Mr.  Morgan  was  friendly 
and  courteous.  He  promised,  in  case  the  matter  ever  reached 
him,  to  do  "what  was  right,"  but  he  had  not  the  power  and  he 
evidently  had  not  the  disposition  to  interfere  at  that  stage  of  the 
controversy.  Hence  up  to  the  time  of  the  convention  of  the 
miners  at  Shamokin  on  March  18,  every  attempt  at  conciliation 


394      MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS    LIFE   AND   WORK 

made  by  Mr.  Hanna  and  his  association  was  thwarted  by  the 
attitude  of  the  operators  —  which  was  dictated  by  a  settled  in- 
tention of  ignoring  the  Union  and  breaking  it.  They  did  not 
want  a  strike.  Apparently  they  believed  that  the  miners  would 
not  carry  hostilities  that  far.  But  the  terms  on  which  a  strike 
was  to  be  avoided  were  practically  unconditional  surrender  on 
the  part  of  the  Union. 

At  the  miner's  convention  Mr.  Mitchell  with  difficulty  pre- 
vented his  followers  from  voting  unequivocally  for  a  strike. 
Finally  it  did  declare  for  a  suspension  of  work  but  upon  a  date 
to  be  decided  by  the  district  officers.  On  March  24,  Mr.  Mitchell 
telegraphed  to  Senator  Hanna  asking  him,  as  Chairman  of  the 
Industrial  Department  of  the  Federation,  to  intervene  on  behalf 
of  some  settlement.  A  meeting  was  finally  arranged  between 
the  miners,  a  committee  of  the  operators,  consisting  of  Presi- 
dents Baer,  Truesdale,  Thomas  and  Olyphant  and  the  concilia- 
tion committee.  At  this  conference  the  discussion  was  ex- 
tremely bitter  and  the  only  result  was  a  postponement  of  the 
threatened  strike  for  thirty  days  from  April  1,  the  operators 
promising  in  the  meantime  not  to  mine  any  more  than  the 
normal  amount  of  coal. 

Late  in  April  another  conference  was  held,  the  general  tone 
of  which  was  much  more  promising  than  that  of  the  first  inter- 
view. Both  sides  were  still  uncompromising,  but  an  agreement 
was  reached  to  continue  the  conference  a  few  days  later  —  the 
conferees  being  a  committee  of  three  operators  and  three  rep- 
resentatives of  the  miners.  This  was  the  kind  of  a  meeting 
which  the  operators  had  refused  in  the  beginning.  They  even 
allowed  Mr.  Mitchell  to  attend  the  final  conference,  a  proceed- 
ing to  which  they  had  formerly  objected,  because  he  was 
not  one  of  their  employees,  but  was  a  bituminous  coal  miner. 
They  were  beginning  to  understand  that  the  national  officers 
of  a  union  may  well  be  more  experienced  and  reasonable  men 
than  the  local  officers. 

The  Committee  of  the  Federation  expected  that  a  settlement 
would  be  reached  at  the  new  conference,  and  the  disappoint- 
ment was  great  when,  on  Wednesday  afternoon,  April  30,  Mr. 
Mitchell  in  Reading  telephoned  to  Mr.  Hanna  in  Washington 
and  reported  a  disagreement.  The  Senator  refused  to  call  the 


THE    CIVIC    FEDERATION   AND   THE   LABOR   PROBLEM      395 

Committee  to  receive  such  a  report  and  during  the  next  few  days 
he  exerted  all  his  personal  influence  to  prevent  the  strike.  Says 
Mr.  Easley  in  an  article  in  the  Independent,  March  3,  1904 : 
"He  went  back  of  the  presidents  of  the  roads  and  undertook 
to  bring  pressure  on  the  stockholders,  getting  a  committee  of 
them  together  in  one  of  the  large  banks  and  talking  with  them 
over  the  telephone  for  two  hours.  He  cabled  to  important 
interests  in  Europe.  On  the  labor  side  he  urged  Mr.  Mitchell 
to  name  the  lowest  possible  figure  he  would  recommend  his 
followers  to  accept,  which  was  a  five  per  cent  increase  (they 
were  asking  for  twenty  per  cent),  and  this  information  was  con- 
veyed to  the  presidents  of  the  roads;  but  they  spurned  the 
suggestion  —  so  certain  were  they  that  the  men  would  not  actu- 
ally strike.  Senator  Hanna,  when  informed  of  the  results  of 
this  suggestion,  said  disgustedly,  'Well!  they  will  not  only 
strike,  but  they  will  get  ten  per  cent  increase  before  they 
settle/  "  They  were  finally  awarded  ten  per  cent  and  in  addi- 
tion a  sliding  scale,  which  amounted  in  some  instances  to  seven- 
teen per  cent. 

On  May  17,  the  miners  again  met  in  convention,  this  time  at 
Hazleton;  and  Mr.  Mitchell  made  a  great  effort  to  secure  the 
acceptance  of  an  appeal  which  had  been  telegraphed  to  the 
convention  by  the  Conciliation  Committee  of  the  Federation. 
This  appeal  proposed  that  a  strike  be  postponed,  until  an  im- 
partial committee  be  selected  to  make  a  full  investigation  of  the 
condition  of  the  laborers  in  the  mines,  their  wages,  hours  of 
employment,  and  all  other  matters  which  form  the  subject  of 
their  complaints.  But  the  effort  failed.  The  delegates  had 
been  instructed  to  vote  for  a  strike,  and  it  was  ordered  by  a  vote 
of  461  to  439.  Thus  all  attempts  at  conciliation  or  delay  proved 
abortive,  chiefly  because  the  operators  did  not  believe  that  a 
strike  would  actually  take  place.  When  it  did  take  place  they 
were  inclined  to  blame  the  Civic  Federation  for  the  result  and 
to  accuse  it  of  meddling  mischievously  in  other  people's  busi- 
ness. 

As  soon  as  he  heard  that  some  of  the  operators  had  been  criti- 
cising the  Federation,  Senator  Hanna  sent  the  following  mes- 
sage to  them :  "You  tell  them  that  if  I  hear  any  more  of  that 
kind  of  talk  I  will  go  to  New  York,  hire  Carnegie  Hall,  and  give 


396      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

them  something  to  talk  about. "  At  another  time  when  he  was 
informed  that  certain  operators  had  attributed  his  interest  in 
the  matter  to  the  beneficial  effect  of  his  interference  on  a  sup- 
posed Presidential  boom,  he  replied :  "Go  and  tell  the  oper- 
ators that  if  they  will  arbitrate  their  differences  with  the  miners, 
I  will  make  an  affidavit  that  I  will  not  only  refuse  to  accept  the 
nomination  for  the  Presidency  if  tendered  to  me,  but,  if  elected, 
I  will  refuse  to  qualify." 

For  many  weeks  after  the  strike  was  called,  Mr.  Hanna  and 
his  associates  on  the  Committee  were  obliged  to  concentrate 
their  forces  upon  beating  off  an  attack  from  another  quarter 
rather  than  upon  the  settlement  of  the  strike  itself.  Some  of 
the  unionists  were  seriously  advocating  the  idea  of  calling  out 
the  bituminous  coal  miners  on  a  sympathetic  strike,  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  these  miners  were  working  under  a  satisfactory 
unexpired  agreement  with  their  own  employers.  Such  a  war 
measure  would  have  been  almost  fatal  to  the  whole  program  of 
the  Federation,  which  proposed  to  bring  about  trade  agreements 
by  means  of  collective  bargaining.  If  such  bargains  were  not 
kept,  there  could  be  slight  hope  of  comparative  industrial  peace 
along  these  lines.  No  effort  was  spared,  consequently,  to  pre- 
vent the  calling  of  the  sympathetic  strike.  For  six  weeks  hard 
and  systematic  missionary  work  was  carried  on  throughout  the 
coal  regions,  both  bituminous  and  anthracite,  to  prevent  what 
was  regarded  by  all  friends  of  the  Federation  as  a  suicidal  act ; 
and  in  this  work  they  were  assisted  by  every  labor  leader  on  the 
Committee.  They  were  successful.  The  convention  of  the 
bituminous  miners  held  at  Indianapolis  on  July  17  voted  against 
a  sympathetic  strike,  and  their  fidelity  to  their  contract  under 
such  a  severe  pressure  made,  as  well  it  might,  a  deep  and  lasting 
impression  on  Senator  Hanna. 

In  his  speech  of  Aug.  9,  1902,  delivered  at  Chatauqua,  he 
said :  — 

"  If  there  ever  was  a  situation  which  would  tempt  men  of  any  class  to 
violate  an  agreement  —  on  the  one  side  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
idle  men  with  hundreds  of  thousands  of  women  and  children  depending 
upon  them  for  their  daily  bread,  approaching  the  verge  of  starva- 
tion, seeing,  or  believing  they  saw,  the  only  remedy  which  would  force 
their  employers  to  a  consideration  of  what  they  thought  their  rightful 


THE  CIVIC  FEDERATION  AND  THE  LABOR  PROBLEM  397 

claim  would  be  through  a  strike ;  and  on  the  other  hand  their  solemn 
promise,  given  only  by  word  of  mouth  to  their  employers,  that  they 
would  mine  coal  for  the  year  1902  at  a  fixed  price  —  if  there  ever  was 
a  test  that  could  possibly  solve  that  question,  there  it  was.  It  is  one 
of  the  proudest  moments  of  my  life,  that  I  can  state  from  this  rostrum  to 
such  an  audience  as  this,  that  the  men  stood  by  their  word.  [Great 
applause.]  Ay,  unanimously,  when  the  matter  came  before  the  con- 
vention, they  declined  to  sign  for  the  strike.  I  say  it  is  a  proud  moment 
of  my  life,  because  it  is  a  ray  of  light  that  comes  to  us  who  are 
working  honestly  in  this  field  of  labor  —  an  encouragement  which, 
had  it  been  prophesied  six  months  ago,  would  have  been  said  to  be 
impossible." 

After  the  threat  of  a  sympathetic  strike  had  been  averted, 
attempts  were  made  to  find  some  acceptable  basis  of  settlement. 
I  cannot  trace  the  course  of  these  negotiations  in  detail;  but 
the  plan,  which  was  gaining  ground,  looked  in  the  direction  of 
submitting  the  whole  dispute  to  the  arbitration  of  a  representa- 
tive expert  commission  with  full  power  and  opportunity  to  make 
a  careful  investigation  of  the  facts.  In  the  meantime  the  sum- 
mer had  passed,  and  winter  was  near  at  hand.  The  coal-bins 
were  empty.  Public  opinion  was  beginning  to  be  alarmed  at 
the  prospect  of  the  suffering  which  would  result  from  an  indefi- 
nite prolongation  of  the  strike.  The  idea  began  to  be  ex- 
pressed that  industrial  disputes  should  not  be  allowed  to  place 
the  public  welfare  in  such  jeopardy.  On  September  27,  Presi- 
dent Roosevelt  wrote  to  Mr.  Hanna:  "What  gives  me  greatest 
concern  at  the  moment  is  the  coal  famine.  Of  course  we  have 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  this  coal  strike  and  no  earthly 
responsibility  for  it.  But  the  public  at  large  will  tend  to  visit 
on  our  heads  responsibility  for  the  shortage  in  coal,  precisely  as 
Kansas  and  Nebraska  visited  upon  our  heads  their  failure  to  raise 
good  crops  in  the  arid  belt  eight,  ten  or  a  dozen  years  ago.  I 
do  not  see  what  I  can  do,  and  I  know  the  coal  operators  are 
especially  distrustful  of  anything  which  they  regard  as  in  the 
nature  of  political  interference.  But  I  do  most  earnestly  feel 
that  from  every  consideration  of  public  policy  and  good  morals, 
they  should  make  some  slight  concession." 

Two  days  later  Senator  Hanna  replied  from  Cleveland,  as 
follows :  — 


398       MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

"  MY  DEAR  MR.  PRESIDENT  :  — 

"  I  am  in  receipt  of  yours  of  the  27th  inst.  and  reply  that  I  share  with 
you  the  anxiety  in  regard  to  the  coal  situation.  After  leaving  Oyster 
Bay,  I  spent  the  balance  of  the  week  in  New  York  raising  money  for 
the  Congressional  Committee  and  trying  to  see  what  more  could  be 
done  with  the  strike.  Confidentially,  I  saw  Mr.  Morgan  and  I  also 
saw  Mr.  Mitchell  (the  public  knows  nothing  about  that).  I  got 
from  Mr.  Morgan  a  proposition  as  to  what  he  would  do  in  the  matter 
and  I  got  Mitchell  to  agree  to  accept  it  —  if  the  operators  would  abide 
by  the  decision.  I  really  felt  encouraged  to  think  that  I  was  about  to 
accomplish  a  settlement.  I  went  to  Philadelphia  and  saw  Mr.  Baer  and 
to  my  surprise  he  absolutely  refused  to  entertain  it.  You  can  see 
how  determined  they  are.  It  looks  as  if  it  was  only  to  be  settled 
when  the  miners  are  starved  to  it,  and  that  may  be  weeks  ahead  as 
they  are  getting  abundant  supplies  from  their  fellow-workmen  all  over 
the  country.  I  am  not  unmindful  of  the  importance  of  this  coal  situa- 
tion and  will  not  miss  an  opportunity  to  help  if  I  can,  but  the  position 
of  the  operators  from  the  beginning  has  put  all  efforts  of  mine  in  a 
false  light  before  the  public,  so  I  am  only  able  to  hold  the  confidence 
of  the  men  and  serve  them  if  I  can." 

The  foregoing  letter  of  Senator  Hanna's  was  received  in 
Washington  on  September  30,  and  it  may  have  had  something 
to  do  with  the  action  immediately  taken  by  the  President  — 
asking  the  operators  to  meet  Mr.  Mitchell  in  a  conference  at 
the  White  House.  On  October  2,  Mr.  Hanna  telegraphed  to 
the  President  wishing  him  every  success  in  his  undertaking ;  but 
success  did  not  follow.  The  obstinacy  of  the  operators  only 
increased  with  every  effort  to  break  it  down.  On  October  3 
the  President  wrote  the  following  letter :  — 

"  MY  DEAR  SENATOR  HANNA  :  — 

"  Well !  I  have  tried  and  failed.  I  feel  downhearted  over  the  result, 
both  because  of  the  great  misery  ensuing  for  the  mass  of  our  people,  and 
because  the  attitude  of  the  operators  will  beyond  a  doubt  double  the 
burden  on  us,  who  stand  between  them  and  socialistic  action.  But  I 
am  glad  I  tried  anyhow.  I  should  have  hated  to  feel  that  I  had  failed 
to  make  any  effort.  What  my  next  move  will  be  I  cannot  yet  say.  I 
feel  most  strongly  that  the  attitude  of  the  operators  is  one  which  ac- 
centuates the  need  of  the  government  having  some  power  to  supervision 
and  regulation  over  such  corporations.  I  would  like  to  make  a  fairly 
radical  experiment  on  the  anthracite  coal  business  to  start  with. 


THE  CIVIC  FEDERATION  AND  THE  LABOR  PROBLEM   399 

"At  the  meeting  to-day  the  operators  assumed  a  fairly  hopeless 
attitude.  None  of  them  appeared  to  such  advantage  as  Mitchell,  whom 
most  of  them  denounced  with  such  violence  and  rancor  that  I  felt  he 
did  very  well  to  keep  his  temper.  Between  times  they  insulted  me  for 
not  preserving  order  (evidently  ignoring  such  a  trifling  detail  as  the 
United  States  Constitution)  and  attacked  Knox  for  not  having  brought 
suit  against  the  miners'  union,  as  violating  the  Sherman  Anti-Trust 
Law.  You  have  probably  seen  my  statement  and  Mitchell's  proposi- 
tion. I  regarded  the  latter  as  imminently  fair  and  reasonable.  Now  it  is 
over  I  may  mention  that  if  the  operators  had  acceded  to  it,  I  intended  to 
put  you  on  the  commission  or  board  of  arbitration.  But  the  operators 
declined  to  accede  to  the  proposition  or  to  make  any  proposition  that 
amounted  to  anything  in  return ;  and  as  I  say  I  must  now  think  very 
seriously  of  what  the  next  move  shall  be.  A  coal  famine  in  the  winter  is 
an  ugly  thing,  and  I  fear  we  shall  see  terrible  suffering  and  grave 
disaster." 

The  idea  of  a  coal  arbitration  commission,  once  having  been 
launched,  found  such  support  from  public  opinion  that  even 
the  operators  had  to  yield.  During  the  negotiations  which 
ensued,  looking  towards  the  appointment  of  the  Commission 
and  the  return  of  the  miners  to  work  pending  its  report,  Presi- 
dent Roosevelt  constantly  consulted  Mr.  Hanna  and  the  part 
which  the  latter  played  towards  the  end  is  indicated  by  the 
following  letter :  — 

"  CLEVELAND,  OHIO,  Oct.  15,  1902. 
"  MY  DEAR  MR.  PRESIDENT  :  — 

"I  talked  with  Mitchell  on  the  'phone'  yesterday,  after  my  conver- 
sation with  you,  and  I  think  he  feels  satisfied  with  the  assurances  given 
him,  although,  of  course,  he  appreciates  the  unfairness  in  the  proposition 
of  the  operators  in  not  naming  an  experienced  miner  as  a  member  of 
the  Commission.  At  his  request  I  sent  him  a  telegram  urging  the 
acceptance  of  the  proposition  and  giving  him  the  assurance  that  the  men 
could  depend  on  absolute  fairness  at  your  hands.  This,  of  course,  was 
to  show  to  influential  men  among  the  miners,  for  whatever  effect  my 
influence  would  have  among  them.  I  sincerely  hope  it  will  end  the 
strike,  and  your  interest  in  the  matter  will  be  appreciated." 

It  did  end  the  strike,  and  the  correspondence  between  the 
President  and  Senator  over  this  critical  matter  may  be  closed 
with  the  following  letter  from  the  President :  — 


400       MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

"WHITE  HOUSE,  WASHINGTON,  Oct.  16,  1902. 
"My  DEAR  SENATOR:  — 

"  Late  last  night  when  it  became  evident  that  we  were  going  to  get  a 
Commission  which  would  be  accepted  by  both  sides,  I  remarked,  '  Well, 
Uncle  Mark's  work  has  borne  fruit/  and  everybody  said,  'Yes/ 
The  solution  came  because  so  many  of  us  have  for  so  long  hammered  at 
the  matter  until  at  last  things  got  into  shape  which  made  the  present 
outcome  possible.  I  hardly  suppose  the  miners  will  go  back  on  Mitchell. 
If  they  do,  they  put  themselves  wholly  in  the  wrong.  I  earnestly  hope 
you  are  now  in  good  shape  physically." 

While  not  attempting  to  tell  the  whole  story  of  the  anthracite 
coal  strike,  I  have  for  several  reasons  dwelt  in  detail  upon 
Senator  Hanna's  relation  to  it.  The  public  scarcely  realized 
at  the  time  the  amount  of  hard  work  which  he  devoted  to  the 
business,  and  the  extent  to  which,  as  President  Roosevelt's  last 
letter  indicates,  he  contributed  to  the  settlement.  The  in- 
cident also  provides  an  excellent  illustration  of  the  methods 
and  policy  pursued  by  the  Conciliation  Committee  of  the  Civic 
Federation  —  an  illustration  which  loses  nothing  because  of  the 
failure  of  Mr.  Hanna's  own  efforts  to  effect  a  settlement.  The 
experience  convinced  him  that  the  Federation  was  working 
along  the  right  lines,  and  that  its  unaided  exertions  in  the  pres- 
ent instance  had  proved  abortive,  chiefly  because  the  operators 
had  wofully  misjudged  the  situation.  They  had  underesti- 
mated the  will  and  the  ability  of  the  Union  to  fight  and  to  resist ; 
and  they  had  failed  to  anticipate  that,  if  the  Union  did  resist, 
their  own  position  on  the  approach  of  winter  and  in  the  face  of 
public  opinion  would  become  untenable. 

The  anthracite  coal  strike  is  one  of  the  very  few  industrial 
disputes  in  which  Senator  Hanna  personally  participated  and 
in  which  he  failed  to  effect  a  settlement.  Up  to  November,  1903, 
about  a  hundred  disagreements  were  amicably  adjusted  by  the 
Conciliation  Committee;  and  their  good  offices  failed  in  only 
eighteen  cases.  Mr.  Hanna's  services  were  constantly  at  the 
call  of  the  Committee.  He  took  part  in  many  important 
negotiations  and  he  contributed  liberally  to  expenses.  All 
his  associates  testify  that  he  was  absorbed  heart  and  soul  in  the 
work,  and  that  it  was  coming  to  occupy  as  much  of  his  time  and 
attention  as  was  his  political  career. 


THE  CIVIC  FEDERATION  AND  THE  LABOR  PROBLEM   401 

A  couple  of  instances  of  his  successful  interference  in  these 
disputes  must  suffice.  For  instance,  there  was  a  disagreement 
between  the  New  York,  New  Haven  &  Hartford  Railroad  and 
its  employees,  which  had  been  carried  so  far  that  the  men  were 
about  to  strike.  The  officers  of  the  road  would  not  consent 
to  an  interview  with  the  officers  of  the  Brotherhood,  because 
the  latter  were  not  their  own  employees.  The  men  appealed 
to  the  Committee  of  the  Federation,  and  Senator  Hanna  was 
called  up  at  Washington  by  the  Secretary  of  the  Committee. 
He  inquired  as  to  the  real  merits  of  the  dispute  and  asked  par- 
ticularly whether  "the  boys  were  right."  The  next  day  E.  E. 
Clark,  Grand  Chief  Conductor  of  the  Order  of  Railway  Con- 
ductors, went  over  to  Washington  to  state  their  case,  and  after 
hearing  it  Senator  Hanna  telephoned  to  Mr.  J.  P.  Morgan  and 
arranged  an  interview  between  the  banker  and  the  union 
leader.  As  a  result  of  the  meeting  the  strike  was  averted,  and 
the  incident  is  said  to  have  resulted  in  a  change  in  the  manage- 
ment of  the  road. 

In  the  heat  of  his  last  campaign  in  Ohio,  when  he  was  a  can- 
didate for  reelection  to  the  Senate,  and  when  he  was  over- 
worked and  in  bad  health,  he  responded  with  similar  celerity 
and  success  to  another  demand  made  upon  him.  Mr.  William 
D.  Mahon,  President  of  the  Amalgamated  Association  of  Street 
Railway  Employees,  came  to  the  Committee  and  reported  a 
disagreement  between  the  Public  Service  Corporation  of  New 
Jersey  and  its  employees.  The  officials  of  the  Corporation 
refused  to  see  him,  and  unless  he  could  meet  them  a  strike  was 
bound  to  follow,  because  hard  feeling  had  been  aroused  and  the 
men  could  no  longer  be  restrained.  Senator  Hanna  was  notified 
of  the  situation  by  telegraph.  The  President  of  the  Public 
Service  Corporation  was  a  fellow-Senator  —  Mr.  Dryden ;  and 
Mr.  Hanna  contrived  a  conference  between  him  and  Mr.  Mahon, 
whereby  the  strike  was  prevented.  In  both  of  these  instances 
the  success  of  the  Committee  was  due  chiefly  to  the  personal 
influence  of  the  Chairman.  The  men  responsible  for  the  di- 
rection of  large  corporations  could  not  afford  to  disregard 
the  suggestions  of  a  man  to  whom  they  owed  so  much.  Even 
in  those  cases  which  were  managed  by  [the  Committee  with- 
out Mr.  Hanna's  help,  his  prestige  was  behind  it  and  often 

2D 


402       MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

enabled  it  to  obtain  a  hearing  and  carry  on  its  work  of  con- 
ciliation.      * 

The  accusation  of  the  operators  that  Mr.  Hanna's  interest 
in  the  settlement  of  labor  disputes  was  due  to  an  ambitious 
politician's  desire  for  personal  popularity  was  frequently  re- 
peated ;  but  as  soon  as  a  man  had  once  heard  Mr.  Hanna  talk 
about  his  plans  and  expectations  they  became  convinced  of  his 
disinterestedness  and  sincerity.  Mr.  Ralph  M.  Easley  states 
that  an  interview  with  Mr.  Hanna  was  usually  sufficient  to 
convert  not  merely  lukewarm  and  mildly  antagonistic  people, 
but  radical  and  suspicious  unionists  and  strong  personal  oppo- 
nents. When  an  attempt  was  made  to  organize  a  local  con- 
ciliation committee  in  Chicago,  Judge  Murray  F.  Tully,  an 
able  and  influential  Democrat,  was  invited  to  cooperate.  Al- 
though he  believed  in  the  arbitration  of  labor  disputes,  he  re- 
fused, because  the  Civic  Federation  looked  to  him  merely  as  an 
annex  to  Mr.  Hanna's  Republican  organization.  He  was, 
however,  persuaded  to  attend  a  public  meeting  and  hear  Mr. 
Hanna  and  Mr.  Mitchell  talk.  After  the  end  of  the  Senator's 
speech,  Judge  Tully  arose  and  said:  "Mr.  Chairman,  I  came 
to  this  meeting  deeply  prejudiced  against  the  whole  idea.  I 
will  be  frank.  I  was  against  it  because  I  deemed  Senator 
Hanna  to  be  nothing  but  a  politician,  and  I  did  not  think  it  was 
a  good  thing  to  have  him  at  the  head  of  the  local  federation. 
But  I  have  heard  him  and  I  am  with  you." 

From  the  foregoing  account  the  Industrial  Department  of  the 
Civic  Federation  may  appear  to  have  been  merely  a  vessel 
wherein  Senator  Hanna's  personal  prestige  was  converted  into 
a  soothing  industrial  balm.  But  such  a  sneer  would  be  very 
unjust  both  to  Mr.  Hanna  and  to  the  Federation.  Undoubtedly 
the  temporary  success  of  the  Committee  was  largely  due  to 
Mr.  Hanna's  personal  influence  with  the  heads  of  corporations, 
and  the  importance  of  this  branch  of  the  work  of  the  Federation 
has  since  his  death  very  much  diminished.  The  program  of  the 
association  was  nevertheless  based  upon  a  sound  analysis  of  the 
immediate  cause  of  the  majority  of  strikes,  and  it  specified  a 
practicable  method  of  averting  them.  Strikes  can  usually  be 
avoided,  in  case  some  means  exists  of  bringing  the  two  dispu- 
tants together  for  the  purpose  of  a  full  discussion  of  grievances, 


THE    CIVIC    FEDERATION   AND   THE    LABOR   PROBLEM      403 

demands  and  differences  of  opinion.  But  conferences  of  this 
kind  implied  in  practice  the  existence  of  some  form  of  association 
among  the  employees  and  their  representation  by  influential 
leaders.  It  implied  as  the  result  of  a  successful  conference  some 
sort  of  an  agreement  defining  the  terms  of  employment  for  a 
specified  period;  and  it  implied  also  the  recognition  of  a  set 
of  rules  which  would  help  to  determine  the  justice  of  the  con- 
flicting demands  of  the  economic  litigants.  It  implied,  in  short, 
the  organization  of  both  employers  and  employees,  a  definite 
theory  of  the  economic  relations  between  them  and  of  the  social 
and  economic  issues  involved  in  their  disputes.  Like  every  ser- 
viceable piece  of  practical  machinery  its  successful  working 
embodied  a  creed,  and  it  could  not  make  any  very  permanent 
conquests,  until  that  creed  was  defined  and  somewhat  generally 
accepted. 

Senator  Hanna  did  not  seem  to  be  the  man  to  give  an  explicit 
and  persuasive  expression  to  such  a  creed.  He  was  not  a  stu- 
dent of  economics.  He  had  no  knowledge  of  the  history  of 
industrial  conflicts  in  other  countries  and  other  times.  His 
general  economic  point  of  view  was  that  of  an  extreme  individu- 
alist who  wanted  public  interference  in  business  confined  to  the 
encouragement  of  private  and  class  interests.  Nevertheless,  the 
desirable  creed  obtained  a  rough  but  very  effective  popular 
expression  at  his  hands,  and  it  did  so  because  in  his  own  life 
he  had  always  lived  up  to  the  creed  which  he  explained  and 
advocated.  The  wholesome  aspect  of  all  his  thinking  was  the 
close,  the  inseparable  relation  between  it  and  his  own  personal 
experience.  In  so  far  as  his  business  and  political  life  had  re- 
stricted his  personal  experience,  his  theories  were  correspondingly 
partial  and  inadequate.  But  in  all  the  human  aspects  of  busi- 
ness his  personal  experience  had  been  large  and  edifying ;  and 
the  thought  in  which  it  was  reflected  became  luminous  as  well 
as  sincere. 

The  ideas  contained  in  his  capital  and  labor  speeches  of  1902 
and  1903  had  for  years  been  lurking  in  his  mind.  They  had 
received  occasional  and  very  partial  expression  in  his  conversa- 
tion and  letters.  But  no  immediate  practical  exigency  had 
arisen  which  compelled  them  to  overflow,  and  the  only  refer- 
ences to  the  labor  question  in  his  earlier  speeches  had  been 


404       MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

prompted  by  the  vindication  of  his  own  personal  relation  with 
his  employees.  But  between  the  spring  of  1901  and  the  sum- 
mer of  1902  he  was,  as  we  have  seen,  actively  interested  in 
several  attempts  to  settle  labor  disputes  by  the  use  of  certain 
methods.  These  experiences  fermented  in  his  mind,  and  stimu- 
lated his  thought.  Even  then  his  ideas  might  have  gone  unex- 
pressed, had  he  not  consented,  as  usual  without  premeditation, 
to  address  in  August,  1902,  two  Chautauqua  meetings.  The 
speeches  delivered  at  that  time,  an  article  in  the  National 
Magazine  on  "  Socialism  and  Labor  Unions"  and  a  final  speech 
made  before  a  labor  union  in  Columbus,  Ohio,  in  April,  1903, 
constitute  his  longest  and  most  important  utterances  on 
the  labor  question.  They  deserve  careful  consideration,  not 
merely  for  the  light  which  they  shed  upon  their  subject-matter, 
but  because  they  enable  us  to  understand  Mr.  Hanna  himself 
very  much  better.  For  the  first  time  in  his  public  career,  some 
of  those  essentially  social  values,  embodied  in  his  personal  life, 
received  explicit  expression. 

He  almost  always  began  with  an  account  of  his  own  prac- 
tical experiences  with  a  prolonged  and  embittered  strike  — 
that  of  the  Massillon  coal  miners  in  1876.  This  one  terrible 
instance,  nearly  thirty  years  before,  had  taught  him  to  see  the 
waste,  the  futility  and  the  criminal  danger  of  allowing  such 
conflicts  to  settle  themselves  without  any  recognition  of  the 
endangered  public  interest.  He  had  believed  ever  since  that 
some  effective  machinery  should  be  provided  for  the  settlement 
of  industrial  disputes,  and  he  welcomed  the  program  of  the 
Civic  Federation,  because  it  recognized  a  public  responsibility 
in  the  matter  and  attempted  seriously  and  intelligently  to 
grapple  with  it.  In  his  own  words  the  Civic  Federation  was 
merely  trying  to  apply  the  "Golden  Rule"  to  the  adjustment 
of  such  a  quarrel  —  which  meant  that  each  of  the  two  contestants 
should  not  oppose  the  legitimate  demands  of  the  other  and  that 
each  should  abandon  any  practices  of  their  own,  inimical  to  the 
best  interests  of  society. 

The  employers,  on  their  side,  should  recognize  that  unions 
were  an  indispensable  and  useful  agency,  not  merely  to  protect 
labor  against  capitalistic  selfishness,  but  for  the  gradual  creation 
of  a  better  understanding  between  the  wage-earner  and  the  wage- 


THE  CIVIC  FEDERATION  AND  THE  LABOR  PROBLEM   405 

payer.  Mr.  Hanna  never  went  so  far  as  to  advocate  a  thorough- 
going policy  of  recognizing  and  favoring  union  labor,  but  the 
tendency  of  his  doctrine  looks  in  that  direction.  If  the  laborer 
can  obtain  his  fair  share  of  the  industrial  product  only  by  organi- 
zation, his  attempts  to  organize  should  be  approved  rather  than 
opposed.  "The  natural  tendency,"  he  said  in  his  Chautauqua 
speech,  "in  this  country,  ay,  and  in  the  world  over,  has  been 
the  selfish  appropriation  of  the  larger  share  by  capital.  As 
long  as  labor  was  in  a  situation  which  forced  it  to  submit,  that 
condition  would  to  a  very  large  degree  continue.  If  labor  had 
some  grievance  and  each  laborer  in  his  individual  capacity 
went  to  his  employer  and  asked  for  consideration,  how  much 
would  be  shown  to  him?  Not  much.  Therefore,  when  they 
banded  together  in  an  organization  for  their  own  benefit  which 
would  give  them  the  power,  if  necessary,  to  demand  a  remedy, 
I  say  organized  labor  was  justified."  It  is  essential,  he  adds, 
that  employers  should  admit  the  existence  of  such  a  justifica- 
tion, and  establish  a  foundation  for  joint  action  and  mutual 
good-will  by  conferring  with  the  unionized  laborers  and  their 
representatives  and  entering  into  agreements  with  them. 

He  had  the  utmost  confidence  in  the  practical  value  of  such 
conferences.  Frequently  misunderstandings  would  be  avoided, 
unreasonable  demands  mitigated,  and  comparative  good-will 
restored  merely  by  a  frank  discussion  and  ventilation  of  mutual 
grievances.  "It  is  truly  astonishing,"  he  says  in  his  article  on 
"  Socialism  and  Labor  Unions,"  "to  consider  what  trivial  dis- 
agreements have  occasioned  some  of  the  most  serious  strikes. 
I  have  seen  two  parties  stand  apart,  each  with  a  chip  on  his 
shoulder,  defying  his  opponent  to  knock  it  off  and  moved  by 
emotions  and  considerations  that  were  very  far  from  promoting 
the  welfare  of  either  party.  There  is  more  to  overcome  in  the 
way  of  feeling  on  the  part  of  capital  than  on  the  part  of  labor. 
Capital  has  been  for  many  generations  intrenched  behind  its 
power  to  dictate  conditions,  whether  right  or  wrong;  and  the 
abrogation  of  this  power  is  not  going  to  weaken  in  the  least 
degree  the  strength  of  the  hitherto  dominant  party,  for  a  manu- 
facturing corporation  can  make  no  better  investment  than  in 
the  hearty  cooperation  and  good  feeling  of  its  employees." 

While  he  justified  the  organization  of  labor  in  the  interest 


406       MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

both  of  the  wage-earners  and  their  employers,  he  feared  certain 
of  its  tendencies.  He  regarded  it  "as  an  imported  article" 
which  had  aroused  a  natural  prejudice  against  itself  in  this 
country,  because  its  policy  was  that  of  aggressive  warfare 
against  capital  —  a  warfare  which  was  to  be  relentless  and  which 
was  "at  variance  with  American  institutions,"  because  it  in- 
troduced a  spirit  of  mutual  suspicion  and  antagonism  instead 
of  a  spirit  of  mutual  confidence  into  the  heart  of  American 
industrial  life.  But  he  believed  that  the  program  of  the  Civic 
Federation  would  "fit  the  unions  to  their  surroundings  and 
conditions  in  the  country."  The  Federation  would  not  coun- 
tenance sympathetic  strikes,  the  boycott,  or  any  restriction  of 
production  in  order  to  enhance  prices.  If  the  unions  insisted 
on  these  policies,  they  would  be  converting  themselves  into 
industrial  and  social  outlaws.  As  a  condition  of  recognition 
they  must  make  themselves  worthy  of  approval  by  abandoning 
all  practices  based  on  an  essential  antagonism  between  their 
own  interests  and  the  demands  of  industrial  efficiency  and  social 
well-being.  He  hoped  to  make  the  Civic  Federation  a  construc- 
tive educational  agency,  which  would  gradually  teach  the  two 
contending  parties  how  far  they  could  properly  go  without 
destroying  a  fair  basis  of  conciliation  and  fruitful  cooperation. 

His  purpose  was  fundamentally  to  re-create  good  feeling  be- 
tween employers  and  their  employees  by  means  of  a  personal  inter- 
course and  the  mutual  application  of  the  " Golden  Rule."  "  My 
theory  is,"  he  said  in  the  Chautauqua  speech,  "that  when  you 
bring  the  men  to  you,  every  employee  will  feel  that  you  are 
treating  him  as  a  man.  Appeal  to  his  heart  and  to  his  mind 
and  you  will  succeed  in  establishing  a  bond  of  confidence."  In 
all  his  utterances  on  the  question  he  reiterates  this  fundamental 
idea.  -  "Every  man  is  vulnerable  in  some  part,"  he  says  in  his 
article  on  "Socialism  and  Labor  Unions,"  "and  it  is  a  rare 
thing  to  find  any  man  proof  against  methods  of  kindness  and 
justice.  If  every  man  is  treated  as  a  Man,  and  an  appeal  is 
made  to  his  heart  as  well  as  to  his  reason,  it  will  establish  a  bond 
of  confidence  as  a  sure  foundation  to  build  upon.  This  is  the 
condition  aimed  at  by  the  Civic  Federation  —  absolute  confi- 
dence on  both  sides.  Many  of  the  ills  that  have  crept  into  labor 
organizations  are  importations  from  older  countries  and  will 


THE   CIVIC   FEDERATION   AND   THE   LABOR   PROBLEM      407 

not  live  here  because  thay  are  not  fitted  to  our  conditions. 
While  labor  unions  may  have  proved  a  curse  to  England,  I  be- 
lieve that  they  will  prove  to  be  a  boon  to  our  own  country  when 
a  proper  basis  of  confidence  and  respect  is  established.  We 
have,  perhaps,  been  too  busy  and  too  engrossed  in  our  rapid 
expansion  to  look  upon  the  ethical  side  of  this  question,  and  have 
forgotten  that  two  factors  contributed  to  the  prosperity  of  our 
nation,  —  the  man  who  works  with  his  hands  and  the  man  who 
works  with  his  head  —  partners  in  toil  who  ought  to  be  partners 
in  the  profits  of  that  toil." 

It  will  be  admitted,  I  think,  that  the  foregoing  program  is 
based  upon  a  sound  analysis  of  the  immediate  causes  of  ordi- 
nary strikes  and  that  it  prescribes  a  remedy  which  offers  in  the 
present  emergency  a  fair  chance  of  being  useful.  Of  course  the 
machinery  whereby  Mr.  Hanna  proposed  to  bring  organized 
capital  and  organized  labor  together  broke  down.  The  In- 
dustrial Department  of  the  Civic  Federation  did  not  continue 
to  be  an  effective  agency  either  for  the  settlement  of  labor  dis- 
putes or  for  the  establishment  of  better  relations  between  Amer- 
ican wage-earners  and  wage-payers.  The  employers  came  in  the 
end  to  resent  its  unofficial  interference.  The  unions  no  longer 
allow  their  leaders  to  cooperate  with  the  Federation.  The 
ill-feeling  and  the  mutual  suspicion  between  the  two  con- 
testants have  increased  during  the  past  ten  years.  But  it  is 
not  fair  to  dismiss  the  whole  program  because  the  Federation 
itself  did  not  prove  to  be  as  permanently  useful  a  conciliating 
agency  as  it  was  during  Mr.  Hanna's  leadership.  The  results 
which  Mr.  Hanna  hoped  to  accomplish  informally  by  the  agency 
of  a  private  organization  backed  by  public  opinion  evidently 
demand  a  more  powerful  and  authoritative  engine  of  the  social 
will  —  one  which  he  himself  might  have  been  loathe  to  call  into 
action. 

Nevertheless  it  would  not  be  fair  to  attribute  the  temporary 
success  of  the  Industrial  Department  of  the  Federation  merely 
to  Mr.  Hanna's  personal  and  political  influence.  This  factor 
counted,  but  it  would  not  have  counted  much,  unless  Mr. 
Hanna  had  been  disinterestedly  engaged  on  behalf  of  what  he 
believed  to  be  a  practicable  plan  of  conciliation.  His  success 
was  due,  that  is,  not  merely  to  his  personal  hold  on  business 


408       MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

men  and  union  leaders  or  his  personal  skill  as  a  negotiator,  but 
to  his  enthusiastic  interest  in  the  question  and  his  increasing 
mastery  of  it.  When  he  said  to  his  audience  at  Urbana :  "Oh! 
my  friends,  you  have  got  to  be  with  these  men,  among  them  and 
a  part  of  them  to  understand  this  labor  question  thoroughly," 
he  was  describing  his  own  actual  position.  He  had  remained, 
if  not  a  part  of  them,  at  least  close  to  them.  They  mutually 
understood  and  trusted  one  another.  His  friends  in  the  unions 
had  that  very  confidence  in  his  good  faith,  which  in  a  gener- 
alized form  he  postulates  as  the  essential  condition  of  any 
permanent  improvement  in  the  relations  between  capital  and 
labor.  They  recognized  his  genuine  sympathy  with  the  wage- 
earner's  ambition  for  a  higher  standard  of  living.  He  earnestly 
endeavored  to  instil  the  same  feeling  into  his  audiences  and 
into  his  business  friends ;  and  whenever  it  is  shared  by  a  larger 
number  of  people  of  all  classes,  the  labor  question  will  lose  much 
of  its  present  critical  character. 

Many  people  who  did  not  know  him  questioned  the  sincerity 
of  his  sympathy  with  organized  labor  and  the  validity  of  his 
ultimate  purposes.  He  advocated  labor  unions,  they  said  and 
still  say,  because  he  found  it  much  more  easy  and  convenient  to 
get  what  he  wanted  out  of  a  few  labor  leaders  than  out  of  a  mob 
of  unorganized  workmen.  Be  it  admitted  that  some  such  motive 
may  have  partly  determined  his  preference  for  the  unions. 
But  the  sincerity  of  his  attitude  was  not  thereby  affected. 
Economic  radicals,  who  believe  in  the  inevitability  and  right- 
eousness of  class  warfare,  like  to  read  into  the  mind  of  every 
representative  of  wealth  a  "class  consciousness"  similar  to 
their  own,  and  they  insist  upon  interpreting  every  action  of 
such  a  man  as  the  result  of  a  more  or  less  conscious  purpose  of 
exploitation.  But  "class  consciousness"  of  any  kind  was  pre- 
cisely the  kind  of  consciousness  which  an  American  like  Mark 
Hanna  did  not  have.  There  welled  up  in  him  a  spring  of  the 
old  instinctive  homogeneity  of  feeling  characteristic  of  the 
pioneer  American.  His  whole  attitude  towards  labor  and  his 
program  of  conciliation  are,  indeed,  the  product  of  an  innocent 
faith  that  his  country  was  radically  different  economically  and 
socially  from  Europe,  and  that  no  fundamental  antagonism  of 
economic  interest  existed  among  different  classes  of  Americans. 


THE   CIVIC   FEDERATION   AND   THE    LABOR   PROBLEM    409 

All  they  had  to  do  was  to  deal  fairly  and  feel  kindly  one  towards 
another. 

He  was,  of  course,  too  shrewd  a  political  leader  not  to  under- 
stand the  added  strength  which  advocacy  of  the  labor  unions  gave 
to  his  advocacy  of  big  business.  His  labor  policy  was  undoubtedly 
framed  partly  as  a  supplement  to  his  corporation  policy. 
"I  believe, "  he  said  in  his  speech  to  the  Ohio  State  Convention 
in  May,  1903,  "I  believe  in  organized  labor,  and  I  believe  in 
organized  capital  as  an  auxiliary."  But  here  again  the  labor 
program  did  not  engage  his  support  merely  because  it  might 
sweeten  the  corporation  pill  for  the  palate  of  the  American 
people.  He  was  one  of  the  first  of  our  public  men  to  under- 
stand that  the  organization  of  capital  necessarily  implied  some 
corresponding  kind  of  labor  organization.  He  saw  clearly  that 
the  large  corporations  could  not  survive  in  case  their  behavior 
towards  their  employees  was  oppressive,  and  that  they  would 
in  the  end  strengthen  themselves  by  recognizing  union  labor. 
Derived  as  the  two  forms  of  organization  were  from  analogous 
sources,  the  future  of  both  depended  partly  upon  their  ability 
to  find  some  basis  of  mutual  accommodation  and  cooperation, 
not  incompatible  with  the  public  interest.  In  grasping  this 
connection,  and  in  insisting  upon  it,  Mr.  Hanna  travelled  far 
ahead  of  prevailing  business  and  political  opinion.  The  large 
corporations  have  at  best  been  paternal  in  their  policy  towards 
their  employees;  and  whether  paternal  or  not  they  have  usu- 
ally been  inimical  to  the  unions.  If  their  directors  had  under- 
stood the  political  and  business  interests  at  stake  as  clearly  as 
Mr.  Hanna  did  and  had  conciliated  union  labor,  their  situation 
at  the  present  time  in  the  face  of  American  public  opinion 
would  have  been  very  much  better. 

At  bottom,  however,  and  most  of  all,  Mr.  Hanna's  labor 
policy  was  the  expression  of  personal  kindliness  and  good-will. 
As  an  embodiment  and  advocate  of  pioneer  economics,  he  had 
always  been  sincere  in  his  belief  that  business  expansion  and 
prosperity  would  be  of  as  much  benefit  to  the  wage-earners  as 
to  the  capitalist.  But  he  was  obliged  to  recognize  that  the 
former  were  not  satisfied  with  the  share  of  the  product  which 
they  received  under  competitive  conditions;  and  he  came  to 
realize  that  they  were  right  in  not  being  satisfied.  His  evident 


410       MAKCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS  LIFE   AND   WORK 

sincerity  in  introducing  this  exception  into  his  general  system 
of  a  state-aided  process  of  economic  production,  but  a  socially 
irresponsible  distribution  of  its  fruits,  proves  his  sincerity  in 
claiming,  as  he  always  had,  that  he  wanted  to  represent  not 
one  class  but  the  American  people  as  a  whole.  By  emphasizing 
this  exception,  by  proclaiming  that  capitalists  had  systemati- 
cally exploited  their  employees  and  that  in  their  dealing  with 
labor  a  humane  motive  should  be  substituted  for  the  ordinary 
economic  motive  —  in  assuming  such  an  attitude  he  was  showing 
once  again  how  clearly  he  could  read  and  profit  by  the  lessons  of 
his  experience.  His  whole  plane  of  political  and  economic 
thought  was  raised  to  a  higher  level.  He  had  liberated  and 
made  articulate  the  underlying  humanity  of  his  own  personal 
feeling  towards  the  mass  of  his  fellow-countrymen. 

But  in  this  instance,  as  in  the  other  more  important  develop- 
ments of  his  public  personality,  the  revelation  had  been  in  a  way 
imposed  upon  him.  He  had  simply  responded  to  a  stimulus.  In 
1900  he  had  not  the  slightest  expectation  of  attempting  to  alle- 
viate the  conflict  between  capital  and  labor.  If  it  had  depended 
on  his  own  conscious  will,  he  might  have  remained  inarticulate 
until  his  death,  and  his  friends  would  have  been  deprived  of 
the  most  lucid  and  unalloyed  public  expression  of  his  honest 
interest  in  the  welfare  of  the  laboring  class.  But  the  Civic 
Federation  happened  to  be  organized.  His  practical  interest 
in  the  labor  problem  had  left  a  trail  behind  it.  The  officials 
of  the  Federation  found  him  out  and  went  to  him  for  help,  not 
he  to  them  for  an  opportunity.  He  responded  to  the  call, 
divined  the  opportunity,  seized  it,  and  in  seizing  it,  not  only 
made  it  bigger,  but  made  himself  big  enough  to  put  it  to  good 
use.  For  the  first  time  in  his  public  career  he  became  a  reformer, 
dedicated  consciously  to  the  task  of  converting  other  people  to 
a  better  way  of  dealing  with  a  fundamental  problem;  and  the 
best  of  it  was  that  his  public  appearance  as  a  labor  reformer  was 
the  natural,  although  fortuitous,  expression  of  his  lifelong  per- 
sonal feelings  and  behavior. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

THE   CAMPAIGN   OF   1903   AND   THE   PRESIDENTIAL   NOMINATION 

A  CONTEMPORARY  observer  of  Mr.  Hanna's  career  might  well 
have  surmised  in  the  fall  of  1901  that  the  Senator  had  climbed 
as  high  in  public  estimation  as  was  possible  for  a  man  of  his 
economic  opinions  and  political  methods.  He  was  the  undis- 
puted leader  of  his  party,  and  he  was  much  more  popular 
throughout  the  country  than  ever  before ;  but  how  could  a  man 
as  definitely  committed  as  Mr.  Hanna  was  to  special  business 
interests  and  to  "machine"  politics  broaden  any  farther  the 
basis  of  his  public  prestige?  We  have  seen  how  he  succeeded 
in  doing  so.  The  increased  scope  of  his  legislative  interests, 
his  willingness  to  consider  all  legislative  projects  from  a  re- 
sponsible national  standpoint,  his  decisive  participation  in  the 
action  of  the  Senate  respecting  an  interoceanic  canal,  and 
finally  his  work  on  behalf  of  a  better  understanding  between 
capital  and  labor,  —  his  actions  in  all  these  matters  had  enhanced 
his  stature  still  further  in  the  eyes  of  the  American  people. 
There  was  no  anticlimax  in  Mark  Hanna's  career.  His  public 
personality  continued  until  the  day  of  his  death  to  gather  size 
and  distinction. 

What  he  had  gained  was  an  increasing  amount  of  confidence 
in  him  on  the  part  of  the  public.  He  had  always  possessed 
the  trust  of  the  men,  no  matter  of  what  class,  with  whom  he 
came  into  practical  association.  After  he  went  upon  the  stump 
he  won  the  support  of  the  Republican  voters  of  his  own  state. 
But  from  the  beginning  his  close  association  with  " machine" 
politics  and  with  merely  business  interests  had  made  a  large 
element  in  public  opinion  question  his  influence  on  public 
affairs.  Many  men  who  liked  what  they  knew  of  his  personal- 
ity did  not  trust  his  methods  or  share  his  ideas.  The  tour  in 
the  Northwest  during  the  campaign  of  1900  had  done  a  good 
deal  to  dimmish  this  distrust,  yet  it  continued  to  prevail,  not 

411 


412      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

merely  among  radicals,  but  among  men  of  reforming  tendencies 
all  over  the  country.  Much  of  it  was  bound  to  remain  in  any 
event,  because  it  was  partly  due  to  divergent  views  of  public 
policy.  But  during  1902  he  came  to  be  regarded  with  increas- 
ing respect  even  by  his  irreconcilable  opponents,  while  at 
the  same  time  the  number  of  these  opponents  was  substan- 
tially diminished.  Many  more  people  than  formerly  tended 
to  accept  his  political  leadership.  Confidence  in  his  personal 
good  faith  unquestionably  attached  thousands  of  the  smaller 
business  men  of  the  country  to  the  support  of  the  existing 
system  —  the  very  class  which,  during  the  year  or  two  after  his 
death,  went  over  to  the  cause  of  reform.  He  was  a  great  power 
not  merely  in  public  and  party  business,  but  in  his  influence 
on  public  opinion. 

A  fair  indication  of  the  nature  and  extent  of  Mr.  Hanna's 
influence  is  afforded  by  the  merely  external  aspects  of  his  life 
in  Washington.  The  employees  of  the  Senate  all  agree  that 
no  other  Senator,  when  he  was  at  the  Capitol,  had  as  many 
callers  as  did  Mark  Hanna ;  and  certainly  the  office  of  no  other 
Senator  was  over-run  with  so  many  and  such  different  people. 
In  his  anteroom  would  be  found  politicians  of  high  degree  from 
all  over  the  Union,  an  equally  large  assortment  of  "big"  and 
little  business  men,  state  governors,  Congressmen,  labor 
leaders,  fellow-Senators  and  even  Cabinet  officers.  Rarely 
did  Mr.  Hanna  at  this  time  call  on  either  a  colleague  in  the 
Senate  or  a  member  of  the  Cabinet.  He  would  usually  tele- 
phone to  the  latter's  office,  say  that  he  wanted  to  see  the  secre- 
tary and  inquire  when  it  would  be  convenient  for  him  to  call. 
Nine  times  out  of  ten  the  secretary  would  make  an  appoint- 
ment to  go  and  see  Mr.  Hanna.  Towards  the  end  the  unusual 
consideration  with  which  he  was  treated  was  partly  due  to  his 
known  physical  enfeeblement ;  but  his  peculiar  prestige  in  the 
world  of  affairs  and  politics  was  no  less  responsible.  The  one 
man  in  Washington  on  whom  he  invariably  called  was,  of  course, 
the  President. 

Another  superficial  fact  of  some  significance  is  that  he  never 
used  his  committee  room  as  an  office.  His  mail,  which  at  one 
time  amounted  to  about  half  as  much  as  all  the  rest  of  the  Sen- 
ate, was  sent  to  his  private  office.  When  he  wanted  to  receive 


THE   CAMPAIGN   OF   1903  413 

callers  at  the  Capitol,  he  used  the  room  of  the  Vice-President, 
which  was  situated  just  across  the  hall  from  the  entrance 
to  the  Senate  Chamber.  The  Vice-President,  Mr.  Hobart, 
loaned  him  the  use  of  this  room  whenever  he  needed  it,  and 
after  Mr.  Hobart's  death,  the  new  presiding  officer  of  the  Senate, 
Mr.  Frye,  was  equally  accommodating.  This  is  a  trivial  fact, 
but  it  is  an  illustration  of  the  privileged  position  to  which  he 
had  obtained  by  virtue  of  personal  ties  and  his  public  impor- 
tance. 

No  man  who  had  succeeded  in  placing  so  much  private  and 
public  credit  to  his  personal  account  could  escape  being  hailed 
as  a  candidate  for  the  Presidency.  Nomination  and  election 
to  the  highest  office  in  the  land  were  about  the  only  American 
political  distinction  which  might  have  still  further  enhanced 
Mr.  Hanna's  prestige  and  power.  It  would,  indeed,  have  been 
the  only  fitting  culmination  to  a  career  which  had  gathered 
such  unexpected  and  unprecedented  momentum.  Had  Mr. 
McKinley  and  Mr.  Hanna  both  lived  until  the  fall  of  1904,  the 
latter's  nomination  and  election  would  have  been  extremely 
probable.  Mr.  Roosevelt  might  have  been  a  stiff  competitor, 
but  he  could  hardly  have  overcome  the  power  of  the  adminis- 
tration, assisted  by  that  of  Mr.  Hanna,  his  friends  and  followers. 
Mr.  McKinley  himself  would  have  been  the  only  man  who  could 
have  prevented  Mr.  Hanna's  nomination. 

Mr.  Hanna  never  deliberately  intended  and  planned  to  make 
himself  President  —  as  he  had  planned  and  fought  to  make  Mr. 
McKinley  President  and  himself  Senator.  Had  he  retained 
his  health,  as  well  as  his  life,  he  would  scarcely  have  refused  a 
nomination  offered  to  him  by  a  substantial  majority  of  his  party  ; 
but  at  no  time  did  he  himself  begin  to  contrive  his  own  nomina- 
tion or  encourage  his  friends  to  do  so.  That  was  not  his  way, 
and  if  it  had  been  his  way,  he  would  never  have  climbed  as  high 
as  he  did.  He  could  not  have  used  his  peculiar  personal  and 
political  advantages  for  the  benefit  of  his  own  ambition  without 
injuring  the  foundations  of  his  power.  His  associates  had 
confidence  in  him,  because,  as  his  career  proved,  he  was  work- 
ing primarily  for  what  he  believed  to  be  the  interest  of  the  party 
or  the  country.  Whenever  he  felt  himself  entitled  to  a  particu- 
lar position,  such  as  Senator,  he  fought  for  it;  but  he  never 


414      MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS  LIFE   AND   WORK 

attempted  to  manufacture  a  title  which  did  not  in  a  very  real 
sense  already  exist. 

There  were,  however,  powerful  individuals  in  the  community, 
who  both  from  friendship  and  interest,  wanted  to  see  Mr.  Hanna 
in  the  Presidential  chair.  Immediately  after  McKinley's  elec- 
tion in  1900  the  newspapers  began  to  publish  articles,  naming 
Mr.  Hanna  as  the  "logical"  nominee  of  the  Republican  party 
in  1904  —  as,  indeed,  at  that  time  he  unquestionably  was.  Dur- 
ing the  fall  of  1901,  just  before  Mr.  McKinley's  assassination, 
some  followers  of  Mr.  Hanna  in  Cleveland  organized  a  Mark 
Hanna  Club,  and  proposed  to  assemble  at  a  public  dinner  and 
launch  a  Hanna  "boom."  They  were  immediately  and  effect- 
ually suppressed.  Mr.  Hanna  publicly  announced  that  he  was 
not  a  candidate  for  the  nomination;  and  at  his  bidding  the 
Mark  Hanna  Club,  with  a  glorious  outlook  towards  the  future, 
was  dedicated  to  the  memory  of  a  dead  statesman  of  Ohio  — 
James  A.  Garfield.  Even  if  Mr.  Hanna  was  to  be  nominated, 
he  obviously  could  not  afford  to  have  the  agitation  in  favor  of 
his  candidacy  originate  so  near  his  own  doorstep. 

The  supersession  of  Mr.  McKinley  by  Mr.  Roosevelt  com- 
pletely changed  the  situation.  The  new  President  had  been 
considered  as  possible  nominee — even  when  he  was  no  more  than 
Vice-President.  His  promotion  made  him  more  than  ever  a 
candidate.  A  President  who  has  served  only  one  term  and 
wants  a  renomination  has  a  presumption  in  his  favor  as  a  matter 
both  of  personal  justice  and  partisan  expediency.  The  one 
effective  way  in  which  his  party  can  approve  his  administration 
is  to  make  him  its  candidate.  To  refuse  him  the  distinction 
constitutes  the  gravest  possible  criticism  of  the  man  and  weakens 
the  strength  of  the  party  in  the  prospective  campaign.  It  can 
be  justified  only  in  case  the  President  has  done  nothing  to  de- 
serve a  nomination,  or  what  he  has  done  has  lost  him  the  support 
of  his  party.  In  Mr.  Roosevelt's  case  he  frankly  wanted  a 
nomination,  and  he  wanted  it  all  the  more  because  he  had  never 
been  elected  to  the  Presidency.  Whether  his  administration 
was  a  success  or  a  failure,  he  could  make  a  strong  bid  for  the 
honor,  as  Chester  A.  Arthur  had  done  in  1884,  by  virtue  of  his 
control  over  patronage.  Any  attempt  to  nominate  Mr.  Hanna 
would,  consequently,  meet  at  best  with  a  powerful  resistance 


THE    CAMPAIGN   OF   1903  415 

from  the  friends  of  a  President  who  had  been  popular  enough 
to  have  the  nomination  for  Vice-President  thrust  upon  him 
against  the  will  of  Mr.  Hanna  and  the  administration.  The 
advocates  of  Mr.  Hanna's  candidacy  could  only  wait  and  hope 
for  some  mistake  or  accident  which  would  injure  Mr.  Roose- 
velt's prospects. 

Nothing,  however,  happened  to  make  the  President  any  less 
available  as  a  candidate.  He  made  some  enemies,  but  he  con- 
quered or  attracted  more  friends.  His  administration  was 
approved,  and  he  himself  was  increasingly  liked  and  admired. 
The  advocates  of  Mr.  Hanna's  nomination  would  necessarily 
have  been  very  much  discouraged,  had  not  the  corresponding 
increase  in  the  Senator's  personal  prestige  tempted  them  to 
believe  that  not  even  the  President's  power  and  popularity 
or  Mr.  Hanna's  own  indifference  could  block  the  road.  Senti- 
ment in  favor  of  their  favorite's  nomination  welled  up  spon- 
taneously on  any  and  every  favorable  opportunity. 

The  first  occasion  on  which  it  obtained  noticeable  expres- 
sion was  at  the  meeting  of  the  Ohio  State  Convention,  held 
in  Cleveland  late  in  May,  1902.  The  Convention  itself  was 
not  of  any  great  importance.  It  assembled  only  for  the  pur- 
pose of  nominating  some  minor  state  officials.  Senator  Hanna 
was  present  and  controlled  its  action  and  its  official  delibera- 
tions. The  platform  contained  a  cordial  indorsement  of  Presi- 
dent Roosevelt's  administration  —  one  so  cordial  that  the  Presi- 
dent wrote  to  Mr.  Hanna  and  thanked  him  for  it.  But  the 
aspect  of  the  Convention  which  attracted  and  deserved  most 
attention  was  the  practically  unanimous  outburst  among  the 
delegates  of  Hanna  Presidential  sentiment.  The  feeling  never 
obtained  any  official  expression,  but  the  manifest  attitude  of 
the  delegates  might  be  fairly  construed  as  a  pledge  of  support 
for  a  movement  in  favor  of  his  nomination.  It  was  so  con- 
strued by  the  newspapers  all  over  the  country  and  a  great  deal 
of  discussion  followed  as  to  the  respective  claims  and  chances 
of  the  President  and  the  Senator. 

In  the  meantime  the  relations  between  the  two  were  cordial 
and  even  intimate.  Both  of  them  were  loyal  to  the  under- 
standing they  had  reached  on  the  day  of  Mr.  Roosevelt's  suc- 
cession. The  President  consulted  the  Senator  about  the  dis- 


416      MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

tribution  of  patronage,  and  usually  took  his  advice.  There 
were  very  few  disagreements  between  them  on  that  score.  They 
cooperated  in  all  legislative  matters  during  the  session  of  1902, 
and  Mr.  Hanna's  success  in  securing  the  favorable  consideration 
of  the  Panama  route  made  a  deep  impression  on  the  President. 
Thereafter  their  joint  interest  in  the  canal  constituted  another 
bond  between  them  —  Mr.  Hanna  being  the  first  man  outside 
the  Cabinet  to  be  confidentially  notified  by  the  President  that 
a  good  title  could  be  secured  to  the  French  property.  We 
have  already  indicated  how  closely  they  were  associated  during 
the  critical  days  of  the  coal  strike  in  October,  1902. 

The  following  incident  illustrates  the  candor  of  their  rela- 
tions and  Mr.  Hanna's  attitude  towards  Mr.  Roosevelt.  In 
April,  1902,  Mr.  Charles  Emory  Smith,  formerly  Postmaster- 
General,  published  in  the  Saturday  Evening  Post  an  article  in 
which  he  said :  "But  the  only  man  who  knows  that  Mr.  Hanna 
has  no  aspirations  towards  the  Presidency  is  President  Roose- 
velt. The  two  men  fully  understand  each  other.  There  are 
questions  of  policy  on  which  they  do  and  will  differ,  but  they 
differ  in  a  frank  and  manly  way,  like  two  self-centred  men  ac- 
customed each  to  think  for  himself,  and  it  does  not  affect  their 
good  understanding."  Mr.  Hanna  sent  to  Mr.  Roosevelt  the 
article  with  the  foregoing  passage  marked  and  accompanied 
by  the  following  note :  — 

4/8/1902. 
"My  DEAR  MB.  PRESIDENT:  — 

"The  enclosed  article  may  not  come  under  your  eye.  There- 
fore I  send  it  to  you,  because  I  think  it  good,  and  because  a  man 
like  Smith  can  see  things  outside  the  area  of  smoke. 

"  Sincerely  yours, 

"M.  A.  HANNA." 

And  the  President  returned  a  reply  saying  that  he  was  delighted 
with  the  article,  and  thought  Smith  a  very  fine  fellow. 

But  the  smoke  and  the  fire  from  which  it  came  were  not  to 
be  dissipated.  During  the  summer  very  little  fuel  was  pro- 
vided for  its  consumption,  and  there  were  no  flare-ups;  but 
during  the  campaign  in  the  fall,  while  Mr.  Hanna  was  stumping 
the  state,  he  was  continually  being  hailed  as  the  next  Republi- 


THE   CAMPAIGN   OF   1903  417 

can  candidate  for  the  Presidency.  The  campaign  was  opened 
on  September  27  at  Akron,  which  was  the  home  town  of 
Chairman  Charles  Dick  of  the  State  Committee,  Mr.  Hanna's 
political  aide.  The  speakers,  who  consisted  of  Secretary  Root 
and  Senator  Foraker,  as  well  as  Mr.  Hanna,  were  continually 
being  interrupted  by  cries  from  the  audience:  " Hanna  in 
1904,"  "Hanna  in  1904."  The  newspapers  remarked  that  the 
crowd  was  apparently  interested  in  another  candidacy  besides 
that  of  Mr.  Hanna.  It  was  plentifully  supplied  with  Dick  as 
well  as  with  Hanna  buttons  —  Dick  for  Governor  in  1903,  Hanna 
for  President  in  1904. 

In  the  speech  made  at  the  Akron  meeting  Mr.  Hanna  first 
introduced  the  phrase  "stand-pat"  into  American  politics. 
He  began  with  the  following  words:  "About  a  year  ago  it  was 
my  privilege  to  attend  the  opening  meeting  of  the  Republican 
campaign,  and  after  thinking  over  the  situation  I  concluded 
to  give  you  a  piece  of  good  advice — 'Let  well  enough  alone/ 
That  was  all  there  was  in  the  campaign  of  interest  to  you.  Now, 
I  say,  '  Stand-pat ! '  [Great  applause.]  You  are  not  on  the  de- 
fensive to-day  in  Ohio,  or  anywhere  in  the  United  States,  or  in 
the  Philippines."  He  continued  to  hold  this  note  during  his 
exhortations  throughout  the  campaign ;  but  after  a  little  prac- 
tice he  improved  upon  the  form  of  the  introductory  sentence, 
until  it  finally  became  a  peculiarly  effective  example  of  his 
colloquial  vigorous  way  of  demanding  the  attention  of  his  audi- 
ence. Some  days  later  at  Steubenville  he  began  as  follows: 
"Two  years  ago  I  suggested  to  the  people  in  view  of  the  pros- 
perous time  that  they  knew  their  business.  They  replied  that 
they  did.  One  year  ago  I  suggested  that  they  'leave  well 
enough  alone.'  They  replied  that  they  would.  This  year  I 
suggested  that  they  'stand-pat/  and  they  will  reply,  'You  bet.' " 
The  "You  Bet"  coming  after  the  "Stand-pat"  brought  down 
the  house  —  as  well  it  might.  This  man  of  action  was  becoming 
a  maker  of  phrases. 

The  phrase  "stand-pat,"  thus  auspiciously  launched  on  a  long 
voyage  in  American  politics,  has  since  been  adopted  as  the  most 
popular  description  of  stubborn  political  and  economic  con- 
servatism. It  is  a  strong  phrase,  and  its  implications  have  un- 
doubtedly done  the  conservative  cause  some  little  harm.  Con- 
2E 


418      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

servative  politicians  dodge  the  word,  and  resent  the  idea  that 
they  are  standing  pat  or  standing  still.  As  originally  used  by 
Mr.  Hanna  it  did  not  necessarily  mean  any  such  immovability 
of  purpose  or  ideas.  He  intended  it  to  be  merely  an  effective 
figurative  description  of  the  proper  attitude  of  public  opinion 
under  the  prevailing  economic  conditions.  The  sun  of  Repub- 
lican prosperity  continued  to  shine.  Why  not  sit  tight  and  en- 
joy its  warmth?  Any  poker  player  knows  that  except  on  rare 
occasions  a  man  who  has  a  "pat"  hand  and  does  not  "stand- 
pat"  is  a  fool.  He  has  not  only  nothing  to  gain  by  drawing 
cards,  but  usually  he  has  everything  to  lose.  That  was  pre- 
cisely Mr.  Hanna's  point.  A  man  who  "stands-pat"  in  poker 
is  in  so  strong  a  position  that  he  can  play  an  aggressive  game 
without  taking  any  of  the  usual  chances.  No  happier  charac- 
terization could  be  invented  of  a  policy  which  was  neither  de- 
fensive nor  experimental.  To  "stand-pat"  on  a  complete  hand 
is  the  only  course  to  follow.  Let  your  opponents  risk  the  long 
chance. 

Senator  Hanna  used  the  phrase  in  order  to  meet  the  demand 
already  being  heard  among  the  Republicans  of  the  Northwest 
for  tariff  revision.  The  tariff  was  the  question  above  all  others 
which  he  was  afraid  to  reopen.  He  knew  that  as  a  matter  of 
practical  politics  the  tariff  was  the  keystone  of  the  whole  Re- 
publican system.  He  knew  that  any  revision  upward  would 
not  be  tolerated  by  public  opinion,  and  any  revision  downward 
would  tear  the  party  to  pieces.  The  result  of  a  subsequent  at- 
tempt at  revision  proved  the  soundness  of  his  apprehensions. 
It  both  split  the  party  and  lost  it  the  confidence  of  the  country. 
The  policy  of  protection  upon  which  the  Republican  party  was 
nourished  for  so  many  years  may  prove  to  be  its  undoing  — 
unless  it  can  gather  strength  to  convert  protectionism  into  a 
system  which  makes  for  national  economic  efficiency. 

Shrewd,  however,  as  was  Mr.  Hanna's  attitude  towards  tariff 
revision  as  a  matter  of  practical  politics,  no  party  could  con- 
tinue to  follow  his  advice.  At  any  particular  moment  it  might 
be  justified  by  the  nature  of  its  hand  in  "standing-pat,"  but  a 
party  which  continued  year  after  year  to  hold  a  "pat"  hand 
and  refused  to  take  the  chance  of  trying  for  something  better, 
would  inevitably  be  suspected  either  of  bluffing  or  rigging  the 


THE    CAMPAIGN   OF   1903  419 

cards.  "Stand-pattism,"  which  under  peculiar  circumstances 
might  be  the  most  available  practical  policy,  is  impossible  as  a 
permanent  course  of  action.  A  typical  American  will  never 
admit  that  he  is  a  "stand-patter"  on  anything  but  a  particular 
question  under  a  particular  group  of  circumstances ;  and  a  po- 
litical party  or  economic  class  which  consistently  held  "pat" 
hands  and  proclaimed  a  policy  of  "standing-pat"  would  in- 
evitably provoke  among  their  opponents  the  cry  that  the  deal 
was  not  square.  How  Mr.  Hanna  would  have  readjusted  his 
policy  to  the  demand  for  a  square  deal,  it  would  be  useless  to 
predict.  He  himself  was  not  a  "stand-patter"  in  respect  to 
the  labor  question,  and  the  germs  of  reform,  when  once  im- 
planted in  a  man's  system,  have  a  tendency  to  ferment  and 
spread.  But  in  1902  and  1903  he  was  undoubtedly  in  danger 
of  being  gradually  forced,  by  his  fear  of  raising  difficult  and 
dangerous  questions,  into  the  position  of  being  a  consistent 
"  stand-patter." 

Apart  from  conspicuous  symptoms  of  Mr.  Hanna 's  popular- 
ity as  a  Presidential  candidate  and  his  new  enunciation  of  "stand- 
pattism,"  the  only  other  novelty  in  the  campaign  of  1902  was 
the  vigorous  campaigning  of  Mr.  Tom  L.  Johnson.  Mr. 
Johnson  had  been  elected  Mayor  of  Cleveland  in  the  spring  of 

1901  and  was  beginning  his  fight  against  the  local  traction 
monoply.     His  decisive  success  in  the  city  tempted  him  to 
venture  out  into  the  state,  and  during  the  fall  of  1902  he  made 
speeches  all  over  Ohio,  carrying  a  circus  tent  with  him,  and 
enunciating  unusually  radical  doctrines  for  a  Democrat  —  in- 
cluding absolute  free  trade,  the  single  tax  and  a  relentless  war- 
fare  against   the  trusts.     Mr.   Johnson's   fierce  onslaught  in 

1902  was  generally  understood  to   be  merely  a  preliminary 
skirmish  to  the  more  serious  battle  of  the  following  fall  —  when 
the  question  of  Mr.  Hanna 's  own   reelection  to  the  Senate 
would  be  contested.     For  that  reason  the  speeches  assumed  a 
personal  character.     The  facts  that  the  two  men  were  both  old 
residents  of  Cleveland,  that  they  had  been  rivals  in  building 
and  operating  street  railways,  and  that  they  stood  for  dia- 
metrically opposite  views  of  public  policy,  —  all  these  circum- 
stances gave  the  campaign  the  appearance  of  a  personal  fight 
between  the  two  men. 


420      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

On  election  day  Mr.  Hanna  was  completely  victorious.  The 
Republican  ticket  carried  the  state  by  the  enormous  majority 
of  100,000.  So  sweeping  a  victory  was  unprecedented,  partic- 
ularly in  an  off  year,  and  it  showed  conclusively  that  Mr. 
Hanna  was  more  than  ever  popular  in  Ohio.  His  political 
leadership  of  the  state  was  the  issue  on  which  the  vote  had  been 
cast,  and  the  result  indicated  a  substantial  increase,  of  popular 
confidence  in  him.  On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Hanna  with  all  his, 
prestige  could  not  shake  Mr.  Johnson's  hold  on  the  people  of 
Cleveland.  The  Mayor  had  the  voters  with  him  on  the  street 
railway  issue.  Tom  Johnson  won  in  the  spring  of  1903  rela- 
tively as  decisive  a  victory  in  the  municipal  election  as  did  the 
Republicans  in  the  state  election  of  the  preceding  fall. 

The  overwhelming  character  of  his  victory  in  the  state  and 
Senator  Hanna's  addition  of  a  labor  plank  to  his  own  personal 
political  platform  served  inevitably  to  increase  the  conviction 
of  Mr.  Hanna's  friends  and  supporters  in  his  availability  as  a 
Presidential  candidate.  They  were  unable  to  take  any  overt 
action,  in  view  of  Mr.  Hanna's  steady  refusal  to  encourage 
the  enterprise;  but  beneath  the  surface  the  ferment  was  the 
more  active  because  it  had  no  regular  public  outlet.  From 
December,  1902,  until  the  end  of  January,  1903,  Senator  Hanna 
received  about  700  letters,  urging  him  to  withdraw  his  refusal, 
or  promising  support  in  case  his  candidacy  became  serious. 
These  letters  indicate  very  clearly  the  strength  of  the  sentiment 
in  favor  of  Mr.  Hanna,  the  sources  of  that  strength  and  the 
varying  motives  of  his  supporters. 

In  the  first  place  those  large  business  interests  with  which, 
Mr.  Hanna  had  always  been  closely  associated  were  strongly 
in  favor  of  his  nomination  and  were  as  strongly  opposed  to 
Mr.  Roosevelt.  In  spite  of  the  latter's  caution  in  urging  radi- 
cal policies  during  his  first  administration,  they  regarded  him 
as  "unsafe."  His  action  in  the  coal  strike,  the  suit  against  the 
Northern  Securities  Co.,  and  above  all  the  general  tone  of  hi& 
public  and  private  utterances  confirmed  them  in  this  opinion. 
Their  natural  preference  for  Mr.  Hanna  was  intensified  by  their 
dread  of  the  only  alternative  candidate.  Indeed,  to  judge  by 
their  letters,  they  were  as  much  interested  in  beating  the  man. 
of  their  fears  as  in  nominating  the  man  of  their  choice.  But, 


THE   CAMPAIGN   OF   1903  421 

the  reason  upon  which  they  most  insisted  for  their  opposition 
to  the  President  was  that  he  could  not  possibly  be  elected. 
One  correspondent  wrote  late  in  1903:  "I  was  astounded  to  see 
in  that  club  [the  Union  League  Club  of  New  York]  — pre- 
sumably as  representative  a  body  of  Republicans  as  there  is  in 
the  country — conservative  thoughtful  men,  — that  there  was  not 
one  out  of  that  whole  membership  whom  I  met  —  not  one  — 
who  believed  that  Theodore  Roosevelt  should  be  nominated, 
or  if  he  were  nominated,  that  he  could  be  elected.  The  reasons 
given  were  not  idle  or  prompted  by  personal  feeling,  but  were 
based  on  the  calm  sober  judgment  of  thinking  men."  Again 
and  again  this  prediction  is  confidentially  made.  It  came  not 
merely  from  business  men,  but  from  politicians  of  experience. 
Both  the  business  men  and  politicians  always  claimed  to  base 
it  not  merely  on  personal  opinion,  but  on  the  result  of  careful 
inquiries  among  their  customers,  employees  and  associates. 
Confidence  in  its  truth  was  apparently  so  universal  among  the. 
supporters  of  Mr.  Hanna  that  their  solicitations  assumed  in 
their  ©wn  eyes  a  holy  war  on  behalf  of  party  success. 

Another  large  group  of  letters  came  from  Republican  politi- 
cians and  office-holdeis  in  the  South.  Mr.  Hanna  had  always 
been  popular  among  them,  because  he  had  placed  the  distribu- 
tion of  patronage  in  the  South  on  a  regular  basis  and  one  which 
left  it  largely  in  the  hands  of  the  local  organizations.  Mr. 
Roosevelt,  on  the  other  hand,  was  less  popular,  because  he  had 
interfered  with  the  smooth  working  of  the  established  system 
and  because  he  was  appointing  some  negroes  to  office.  Per- 
sonal grievances  lay  behind  many  of  these  letters,  as  well  as 
personal  loyalty  to  a  man  who  had  done  a  great  deal  for  them. 
They  made  it  apparent  that,  in  case  a  fight  had  occurred,  the 
administration  candidate  would  not  have  had  his  usual  walk- 
over in  the  South. 

Besides  letters  belonging  to  the  two  classes  mentioned  above 
there  were  a  large  number  of  appeals  from  small  business  men 
and  lawyers  all  over  the  country  who  were  ardent  admirers 
of  Mr.  Hanna  and  wanted  him  to  be  a  candidate  —  not  to  save 
the  country  or  the  party,  but  merely  because  they  approved 
of  his  policies  and  liked  him  as  a  man.  Most  of  the  corre- 
spondents belonging  to  this  class  had  neither  grievances  against 


422      MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

Mr.  Roosevelt  nor  fear  of  his  political  influence.  Many  of 
them  professed  a  lively  admiration  of  the  President.  But  they 
admired  Mr.  Hanna  still  more,  and  urged  that  the  accident  of 
Mr.  McKinley's  death  should  not  deprive  him  of  a  nomination 
to  which  his  services  to  the  party  and  the  country  entitled  him. 

Towards  the  end  of  1902  the  situation  and  the  resulting 
gossip  and  discussion  began  to  have  an  effect  on  the  relations 
between  President  Roosevelt  and  Mr.  Hanna.  There  was, 
indeed,  no  change  in  the  latter,  nor  any  reason  for  change.  He 
was,  as  always,  playing  fair.  In  his  promise  to  support  Mr. 
Roosevelt  he  had  expressly  reserved  the  question  of  the  next 
Presidential  nomination.  In  spite  of  his  increasing  friendship 
for  Mr.  Roosevelt,  he  so  far  shared  the  opinion  of  his  own  sup- 
porters that  he  would  have  preferred  another  candidate.  But 
he  was  not  working  for  any  other  candidate,  and  he  always 
expressly  and  emphatically  discouraged  his  own  supporters. 
He  sympathized  in  a  way  with  the  President's  ambition,  and 
never  believed  that  the  latter's  nomination  would  be  or  could 
be  prevented.  Nevertheless,  honest  and  loyal  as  he  was  about 
the  matter,  the  ambiguity  and  complications  of  the  general 
situation  invited  misinterpretation.  The  opinions  and  prepara- 
tions of  Mr.  Hanna's  friends  were  known  to  Mr.  Roosevelt. 
The  President  was  fighting  an  opposition  which  was  as  vague 
and  impalpable  as  it  was  powerful,  but  which  derived  its 
power  chiefly  from  the  possibility  of  Mr.  Hanna's  acquiescence 
or  support.  The  latter  held  the  key  to  the  situation.  He 
might  not  be  able  absolutely  to  lock  the  door  against  Mr. 
Roosevelt's  nomination,  but  he  could  certainly  at  any  moment 
throw  the  door  wide  open.  Eventually  he  must  do  either  one 
thing  or  the  other.  A  man  who  holds  a  key  but  refuses  to  use 
it  exposes  himself  to  misunderstanding.  Mr.  Hanna  as  well 
as  Mr.  Roosevelt  had  his  enemies.  They  soon  began  to  use 
the  equivocal  aspects  of  the  situation  to  make  trouble  between 
the  President  and  the  Senator. 

The  first  and  only  occasion  on  which  the  trouble  received 
public  expression  was  in  May,  1903,  just  before  the  meeting 
of  the  Ohio  State  Convention,  and  not  long  after  a  notable 
expression  of  the  President's  wish  to  please  Mr.  Hanna.  The 
former  was  planning  a  long  tour  throughout  the  West  after  the 


THE   CAMPAIGN   OF   1903  423 

adjournment  of  Congress.  Before  he  departed  he  surprised 
and  delighted  the  Senator  by  saying  that  he  would  like  to  at- 
tend the  wedding  of  Mr.  Raima's  daughter  Ruth,  which  was 
scheduled  for  early  in  June  —  an  unusual  request,  which  made 
the  wedding  look  like  an  affair  of  state.  At  the  same  time  the 
President  also  consulted  the  Senator  about  the  substance  of  his 
speeches  while  on  tour;  and  their  misunderstanding  had  not 
gone  so  far  that  they  could  not  joke  about  its  cause.  On  March 
20  Mr.  Hanna  wrote  to  the  President  the  following  note, 
apropos  of  a  published  interview  with  General  Charles  H. 
Grosvenor,  in  which  the  Congressman  stated  at  some  length 
and  with  great  emphasis  that  Mr.  Roosevelt  had  the  nomina- 
tion for  1904  in  his  pocket,  that  the  talk  of  opposition  to  him 
was  nonsense,  and  that  any  man  who  opposed  him  would  be 
committing  political  suicide.  Mr.  Hanna  enclosed  a  copy  of 
the  interview  and  added :  — 
"My  DEAR  MR.  PRESIDENT:  — 

"This  settles  me.  Does  it  also  settle  my  candidate  for  the 
Pension  Agency  of  Ohio?  He  'bows  too  low/ 

"  Hastily  yours, 

"M.  A.  HANNA." 

Of  course  the  political  enemies  of  Mr.  Hanna  in  Ohio  were 
among  Mr.  Roosevelt's  most  aggressive  supporters.  It  was 
these  gentlemen  who  caused  the  disagreeable  incident  that 
occurred  just  before  the  meeting  of  the  Ohio  State  Convention. 
On  May  23,  1903,  a  despatch  from  Washington  was  published 
in  the  newspapers  containing  an  interview  with  Senator  Foraker, 
in  which  the  Senator  alleged  that  "the  talk  about  having  our 
Convention  declare  in  favor  of  President  Roosevelt  as  our 
candidate  next  year  was  started  by  his  [Mr.  Hanna's]  own 
friends,"  that  Mr.  Elmer  Dover,  Senator  Hanna's  secretary, 
and  others  had  denied  in  the  papers  that  such  action  would  and 
should  be  taken,  and  that  these  anti-Roosevelt  declarations 
had  forced  the  issue.  If  no  such  announcement  had  been  made, 
the  Convention,  according  to  Mr.  Foraker,  might  very  well  have 
contented  itself  with  a  mere  indorsement  of  President  Roose- 
velt's administration,  but  now  that  the  issue  had  been  precipi- 
tated, it  would  have  to  be  met.  The  Convention  would  either 
have  to  make  such  a  declaration  or  refuse  to  make  it. 


424      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

The  next  day  the  following  statement  from  Senator  Hanna 
appeared  in  the  press :  — 

"I  have  seen  the  reported  interview  with  Senator  Foraker  with 
reference  to  the  proposed  indorsement  of  the  nomination  of  President 
Roosevelt  by  the  next  Republican  State  Convention.  At  the  outset  I 
want  to  deny  that  Mr.  Dover,  my  private  secretary,  or,  so  far  as  I  know, 
any  of  my  friends,  had  anything  to  do  with  raising  this  question.  The 
first  I  knew  of  it  was  when  I  read  in  the  papers  a  previous  interview 
with  Senator  Foraker,  which  I  construed  as  an  expression  of  his  own 
personal  views.  This  was  followed  by  an  interview  with  General 
Grosvenor  along  the  same  line.  These  made  it  apparent  that  there 
was  a  disposition  on  the  part  of  some  people  to  suggest  such  action  by 
the  Convention. 

"  I  have  no  criticism  to  make  of  any  individual  as  to  his  right  to 
entertain  or  to  express  such  views,  but  I  certainly  do  criticise  the 
propriety  of  action  along  that  line  by  the  delegates  to  the  State  Con- 
vention who  are  chosen  for  the  purpose  of  nominating  a  state  ticket.  It 
does  not  appear  to  me  to  be  entirely  proper  for  this  Convention  to 
assume  the  prerogative  of  the  one  to  be  chosen  in  1904,  and  upon  which 
will  rest  the  responsibility  of  representing  and  expressing  the  sentiment 
in  our  state  for  any  candidate. 

"  It  would  seem  unnecessary  for  me  to  say  that  these  conclusions  are 
in  no  way  influenced  by  any  personal  desires  or  ambitions  of  my  own. 
I  have  often  stated  both  privately  and  publicly  that  I  am  not,  and  will 
not  be,  a  candidate  for  the  Presidential  nomination.  On  account  of 
my  position  as  Chairman  of  the  Republican  National  Committee,  and 
the  further  fact  that  this  year  I  am  supposed  to  have  a  vital  interest 
in  the  results  in  Ohio  as  bearing  upon  my  reelection  to  the  United 
States  Senate,  it  would  be  presumed  that  I  might  have  some  influence  as 
to  the  policy  or  action  of  the  State  Convention  this  year  in  national 
affairs.  In  that  connection  it  would  seem  apparent  that  whatever 
that  influence  might  be  it  had  been  exerted  in  a  direction  which  would 
cause  just  criticism  on  the  part  of  any  other  person  who  might  aspire 
to  be  a  candidate  for  the  Republican  nomination  for  President  in  1904. 
For  these  reasons  I  am  opposed  to  the  adoption  of  such  a  resolution." 

The  issue  thus  raised  was  ugly  and  placed  Mr.  Hanna  in  an 
embarrassing  situation.  He  was  opposed  to  a  Roosevelt  in- 
dorsement for  reasons  soon  to  be  stated  in  detail,  but  he  had 
not  wanted  to  show  his  opposition.  If  he  indorsed  the  Presi- 
dent, he  was  apparently  shutting  the  door  on  any  other  candi- 
date. If  he  opposed  the  indorsement,  he  would  incur  the  oppo- 


THE   CAMPAIGN   OF    1903  425 

sition  of  Mr.  Roosevelt's  friends  during  his  own  campaign  for 
reelection.  Mr.  Foraker  had  cleverly  contrived  to  force  the  issue 
into  the  limelight,  while  at  the  same  time  placing  the  responsi- 
bility for  so  doing  on  Mr.  Hanna.  Under  such  circumstances 
either  alternative  presented  increasing  difficulties.  Mr.  Hanna 
still  hoped,  however,  to  refuse  the  indorsement  without  alienat- 
ing Mr.  Roosevelt.  On  the  day  that  he  gave  out  the  interview, 
he  sent  the  following  telegram  to  President  Roosevelt :  — 

"  SEATTLE,  WASHINGTON. 
"THE  PRESIDENT:  — 

"The  issue  that  has  been  forced  upon  me  in  the  matter  of  our 
State  Convention  this  year  indorsing  you  for  the  Republican 
nomination  next  year  has  come  in  a  way  which  makes  it  neces- 
sary for  me  to  oppose  such  a  resolution.  When  you  know  all 
the  facts,  I  am  sure  that  you  will  approve  my  course. 

"M.  A.  HANNA." 

President  Roosevelt  replied  the  same  day  and  gave  his  telegram 
to  the  Associated  Press. 

"CLEVELAND,  OHIO. 
"HoN.  M.  A.  HANNA:  — 

"Your  telegram  received.  I  have  not  asked  any  man  for  his 
support.  I  have  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  raising  this  issue. 
Inasmuch  as  it  has  been  raised,  of  course,  those  who  favor  my 
administration  and  my  nomination  will  favor  indorsing  both, 
and  those  who  do  not  will  oppose. 

1 '  THEODORE  ROOSEVELT.  ' ' 

This  telegram  and  its  immediate  publication  made  it  impos- 
sible for  Mr.  Hanna  to  escape  the  sharp  edge  of  one  of  the  two 
alternatives.  He  had  confidently  expected  Mr.  Roosevelt  to 
accept  his  assurance  that  opposition  to  the  indorsement  did 
not  mean  enmity  to  the  President.  It  simply  meant  that  he 
did  not  want  to  shut  the  door  on  other  candidates  and  that  he 
did  not  want  his  campaign  for  reelection  in  1903  embarrassed 
by  the  personal  issues  of  1904.  After  the  answering  telegram, 
however,  further  opposition  to  the  indorsement  would  be  inter- 
preted as  a  declaration  of  war  against  the  President  and  might 
have  split  the  party  in  his  state.  He  was  forced,  consequently, 


426      MAKCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

to  take  his  medicine ;  but  it  was  a  nasty  dose  and  he  resented 
the  action  which  compelled  him  to  back  down  in  the  face  of  his 
personal  opponents.  On  May  26  he  telegraphed  to  the  Presi- 
dent :  — 

"Your  telegram  of  the  23d  received.  In  view  of  the  senti- 
ment expressed  I  shall  not  oppose  the  indorsement  of  your 
administration  and  candidacy  by  our  State  Convention.  I  have 
given  the  substance  of  this  to  the  Associated  Press." 

In  the  meantime  he  had  written  to  Mr.  Roosevelt  explaining 
why  he  had  opposed  the  indorsement.  I  have  no  copy  of  the 
letter,  but  probably  it  did  not  differ  in  substance  from  a  letter 
which  he  had  written  on  May  23  to  George  B.  Cox  of  Cincinnati, 
and  which  is  a  perfectly  candid  statement  of  his  actual  grounds 
of  opposition. 

"Mr  DEAR  Cox:  — 

"  You  have  seen  the  row  which  has  been  kicked  up  about  the  proposed 
indorsement  of  President  Roosevelt  at  the  next  State  Convention. 
This  proposition  was  a  surprise  to  me  —  not  because  I  have  the  faintest 
idea  of  being  a  candidate  —  but  because  it  is  not  a  proper  thing  to  do 
under  present  conditions  for  the  following  reasons.  First  the  State 
Convention  this  year  has  no  right  to  assume  the  responsibilities  of 
the  next  year's  Convention  as  to  any  expression  of  the  choice  of  candi- 
dates. Second  my  objections  on  personal  grounds  are  as  follows:  I 
am  Chairman  of  the  National  Committee.  This  is  my  year  in  Ohio 
politics.  I  am  supposed  to  have  influence  to  control  the  Convention 
as  to  its  policy.  Therefore  if  President  Roosevelt  is  indorsed  at  this 
time  it  would  be  charged  that  I  was  responsible  for  shutting  the  door 
in  the  face  of  any  other  candidate  who  might  aspire  for  the  place. 
Such  action  would  be  criticised  and  justly  so.  I  do  not  believe  that 
the  President  himself  would  favor  it,  and  I  know  well  he  would  appre- 
ciate the  embarrassment  under  which  I  would  be  placed.  I  had 
hoped  and  expected  that  nothing  would  occur  to  give  me  trouble 
this  year.  But  as  I  cannot  favor  this  action  for  reasons  given  above, 
I  shall  certainly  oppose  the  resolution  of  indorsement  at  this  time  and 
hope  my  friends  will  approve  and  support  my  action. 

"  Truly  yours, 

"M.  A.  HANNA." 

On  May  29  the  President  returned  the  following  somewhat 
apologetic  explanation  of  his  belligerent  telegram  to  Mr.  Hanna. 


THE   CAMPAIGN   OF   1903  427 

"MY  DEAR  SENATOR:  — 

"  I  thank  you  for  your  letter  which  gave  me  the  first  gleam  of  light 
on  the  situation.  I  do  not  think  you  appreciated  the  exact  effect 
that  your  interview  and  announced  position  had  on  the  country 
at  large.  It  was  everywhere  accepted  as  the  first  open  attack 
on  me,  and  it  gave  heart,  curiously  enough,  not  only  to  my  op- 
ponents but  to  all  the  men  who  lump  you  and  me  together  as  im- 
properly friendly  to  organized  labor  and  to  the  working  men  generally. 
The  mischievous  effect  was  instantly  visible.  The  general  belief  was 
that  this  was  not  your  move,  save  indirectly ;  but  that  it  was  really 
an  attack  by  the  so-called  Wall  Street  forces  on  me,  to  which  you  had 
been  led  to  give  a  reluctant  acquiescence.  I  might  not  have  said  any- 
thing for  publication  at  all,  had  it  not  been  for  the  statement  that  I 
approved  your  course.  In  the  way  the  movement  was  interpreted 
this  looked  as  if  I  was  approving  having  my  throat  slit.  My  view 
was  that  you,  of  course,  had  an  absolute  right  to  be  a  candidate  your- 
self, but  that  if  you  were  not  one,  you  would  be  doing  me  and  the 
Republican  party  serious  harm  by  fighting  and  very  probably  beating 
the  proposition  to  indorse  me  by  the  Ohio  Convention. 

"  After  thinking  the  matter  carefully  over  I  became  sure  that  I  had  to 
take  a  definite  stand  myself.  I  hated  to  do  it,  because  you  have  shown 
such  generosity  and  straightforwardness  in  all  your  dealings  with  me 
that  it  was  peculiarly  painful  to  me  to  be  put,  even  temporarily,  hi 
a  position  of  seeming  antagonism  to  you.  No  one  but  a  really  big 
man  —  a  man  above  all  petty  considerations  —  could  have  treated  me 
as  you  have  done  during  the  year  and  a  half  since  President  McKin- 
ley's  death.  I  have  consulted  you  and  relied  on  your  judgment  more 
than  I  have  done  with  any  other  man.  Allow  me  to  say  that  your 
magnanimous  speech  at  the  Cuyahoga  County  Convention  is  but  an- 
other illustration  of  your  course  towards  me  and  I  appreciate  it  to 
the  full. 

"  Faithfully  yours, 

"  THEODORE  ROOSEVELT." 

Therewith  the  incident  closed,  and  not  many  days  after,  the 
President  was  for  twenty-four  hours  Mr.  Hanna's  guest  in  Cleve- 
land. But  the  effects  of  the  little  bout  were  different  from  what 
appeared  on  the  surface.  Mr.  Roosevelt  had  wanted  Mr. 
Hanna  either  to  open  the  door  or  to  slam  it,  so  that  his  suspense 
would  be  over  and  he  would  have  a  fight  on  his  hands  or  a  clear 
field.  Apparently  he  had  gained  a  clear  field,  but  in  reality 
he  had  only  increased  the  Senator's  indisposition  unequivo- 


428      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

cally  to  indorse  his  candidacy.  Mr.  Hanna  had  been  placed 
in  a  humiliating  position  at  the  very  moment  when  he  particu- 
larly wished  to  appear  to  the  public  as  the  conquering  hero; 
and  during  the  following  fall,  when  the  question  of  the  Presi- 
dential nomination  was  finally  becoming  acute,  his  behavior 
was  influenced  by  his  recollection  of  the  incident  of  the  previous 
spring. 

If  Mr.  Roosevelt  wanted  above  all  things  to  receive  the  per- 
sonal tribute  of  a  nomination  and  election  to  the  Presidency, 
so  Mr.  Hanna  wanted  above  all  things  a  triumphant  return  to 
the  Senate.  The  circumstances  of  his  first  election  as  Senator, 
the  vicious  personal  opposition  which  had  greeted  his  candi- 
dacy within  and  without  the  party,  the  narrow  margin  whereby 
he  had  secured  the  seat,  and  the  way  in  which  his  title  to  the 
seat  had  been  attacked  in  the  Senate,  —  all  these  facts  made  him 
desire,  not  merely  the  public  vindication  of  another  term,  but 
the  reward  and  satisfaction  of  an  overwhelming  victory.  As 
he  wrote  to  "Boss"  Cox,  this  was  his  year  in  Ohio  politics,  and 
he  could  not  afford  to  have  his  probable  victory  either  threat- 
ened, diminished  or  marred. 

His  good  judgment  and  self-control  in  avoiding  the  issue 
which  had  been  forced  upon  him,  even  at  the  cost  of  a  retreat 
in  the  face  of  his  enemies,  were  rewarded  by  success.  There 
was  no  further  hint  of  discord  either  in  the  Convention  or  in 
the  campaign.  It  really  became  his  year  in  Ohio  politics. 
When  the  people  cast  their  ballots  on  the  following  November, 
their  verdict  was  not  complicated  by  the  intrusion  of  any  ir- 
relevant issues.  The  Convention  nominated  as  the  Republican 
candidate  for  Governor,  not  General  Charles  Dick,  but  Myron 
T.  Herrick.  Colonel  Herrick  had  been  closely  associated  with 
Mr.  Hanna  in  politics  since  the  Convention  of  1888.  As  a 
friend  of  Mr.  McKinley  as  well  as  of  Mr.  Hanna  he  had  been  con- 
stantly consulted  by  both  men  before  and  during  the  Conven- 
tion of  1896;  and  probably  no  other  political  leader  in  Ohio, 
General  Dick  excepted,  had  been  closer  to  Mr.  Hanna.  His 
candidacy  had  been  announced  in  January,  1903,  and  it  had  been 
publicly  accepted  in  April  both  by  Mr.  Hanna  and  "Boss" 
Cox  of  Cincinnati.  The  Foraker  wing  of  the  party  had  to  be 
satisfied  with  the  candidate  for  Lieutenant-Governor,  which 


THE   CAMPAIGN   OF   1903  429 

represented  its  usual  share  of  desirable  public  offices.  The 
fact,  however,  that  the  Lieutenant-Governor  was  associated 
with  Mr.  Foraker  made  some  difference  later,  because  when 
Colonel  Herrick  was  mentioned  as  a  possible  running  mate  for 
Mr.  Roosevelt,  he  was  embarrassed  by  the  fact  that  if  he  re- 
signed, the  state  administration  would  be  turned  over  to  a 
follower  of  Mr.  Foraker.  Besides  indorsing  President  Roose- 
velt and  nominating  Colonel  Herrick  the  Convention  also 
indorsed  Mr.  Hanna  for  another  term;  and  his  personality 
•could  not  be  intruded  into  the  campaign  without  becoming  its 
dominant  point  of  attraction  and  repulsion. 

The  Convention  with  its  stormy  prologue  and  its  harmon- 
ious ending  was  no  sooner  over  than  the  eyes  of  the  country 
were  again  turned  towards  Cleveland  and  the  personal  affairs 
of  Mr.  Hanna.  On  June  10  his  daughter  Ruth  was  married 
to  Mr.  Joseph  Medill  McCormick,  the  son  of  Mr.  Robert  S. 
McCormick  of  Chicago.  Under  the  circumstances  the  mar- 
riage festivity  could  scarcely  avoid  becoming  a  tribute  to  Senator 
Hanna's  prestige  in  public  life  and  to  his  personal  popularity  — 
not  merely  among  his  neighbors  but  among  his  colleagues  and 
political  associates. 

In  making  plans  for  the  wedding  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hanna  had 
been  somewhat  embarrassed.  They  hoped  that  the  President 
and  all  the  Senator's  Washington  friends  would  attend;  but 
they  did  not  want  them  to  feel  obliged  to  do  so.  Much  to  their 
satisfaction  the  President  and  certain  prominent  public  men 
indicated  so  plainly  a  desire  for  an  invitation  that  the  matter 
.settled  itself.  Besides  Mr.  Roosevelt  and  Miss  Alice  Roosevelt 
there  were  present  Senator  and  Mrs.  Nelson  Aldrich,  Senator 
Hale,  Senator  and  Miss  Kean,  Senator  Beveridge,  Senator  and 
Mrs.  Wetmore,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Clement  Griscom,  General  Corbin, 
Postmaster-General  Henry  C.  Payne  and  his  wife  and  many 
others.  Not  merely  Senator  Hanna's  own  house  on  the  lake 
front  was  filled  with  guests,  but  also  the  house  of  his  brother, 
Leonard  C.  Hanna,  and  that  of  his  son,  D.  R.  Hanna.  On  an 
occasion  of  this  kind  Mr.  Hanna  was  in  his  element  and  at  his 
best.  He  enjoyed  nothing  so  much  as  having  a  crowd  of  friends 
and  relatives  gather  in  his  house  to  celebrate  some  happy  occa- 
sion or  event.  It  brought  out  the  abounding  store  of  good- 


430      MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

fellowship  in  his  nature  and  the  warmth  of  his  feeling  for  his 
friends.  He  managed  to  be  omnipresent,  chatted  with  every- 
body, and  made  all  feel  how  much  pleasure  their  presence  gave 
to  him.  As  usual  his  good  humor  overflowed  in  jokes.  On  the 
evening  of  the  wedding  day  he  caused  consternation  in  two  of 
his  guests,  who  never  dined  without  champagne,  by  telling 
them  that  the  supply  had  fallen  short.  They  looked  extremely 
unhappy,  until  they  reached  the  dinner-table,  and  found  that 
it  was  a  false  alarm.  Mrs.  Hanna  states  that  she  had  never 
seen  him  in  higher  spirits  and  happier  than  he  was  on  this 
occasion. 

The  summer  was  spent  chiefly  in  preparations  for  the  fall 
election.  Not  even  the  national  campaign  of  1896  was  planned 
more  elaborately  and  carefully.  In  view  of  the  huge  Republi- 
can majority  in  the  fall  of  1902,  the  prospects  of  a  Republican 
victory  looked  brilliant,  but  it  was  always  Mr.  Hanna's  prac- 
tice to  make  assurance  doubly  sure.  To  judge  from  his  cor- 
respondence he  really  believed  that  there  was  some  danger  of 
defeat.  He  is  constantly  repeating  that  he  has  the  fight  of  his 
life  on  his  hands.  Assuredly  he  spared  no  effort  which  might 
contribute  to  success,  and  brought  into  play  all  his  arts  and 
resources  as  a  campaign  manager.  His  exertions  during  this 
canvass  were  a  terrible  strain  upon  his  already  enfeebled  physi- 
cal condition  and  aroused  the  anxiety  of  his  friends  and  family. 

In  all  probability  he  was  not  so  much  anxious  about  the  re- 
sult as  very  much  excited.  His  reelection  was  the  dominant 
issue  of  the  campaign.  The  Democrats  had  nominated  Tom 
Johnson  for  Governor,  and  an  excellent  man,  although  not  a 
particularly  strong  candidate,  named  John  H.  Clarke  for  Sen- 
ator. Their  platform  advocated  municipal  street  railways  and 
the  equalization  of  taxation,  and  made  virulent  attack  on  the 
privileges  and  powers  of  incorporated  wealth.  Tom  Johnson 
was  responsible  for  the  platform  and  was  leading  the  anti- 
Hanna  fight.  He  aroused  a  good  deal  of  enthusiasm  on  the 
stump,  and  put  so  much  energy  into  his  attack  that  there  may 
have  been  some  superficial  cause  for  anxiety.  Mr.  Johnson 
had  won  a  decisive  victory  in  Cleveland  in  the  spring  of  1903. 
An  industrial  shadow  had  appeared  which  was  depriving  much 
of  the  business  of  the  country  of  the  warmth  radiating  from 


THE    CAMPAIGN   OF    1903  431 

the  sun  of  Republican  prosperity.  Mr.  Hanna  feared  also 
that  votes  for  Democratic  legislators  would  be  bought  with 
votes  for  a  Republican  Governor.  .  In  any  event  he  wished  to 
be  reflected  by  a  majority  so  overwhelming  that  the  memory 
of  his  first  election  would  be  wiped  out,  and  he  would  appear 
before  the  world  as  the  undisputed  possessor  of  the  confidence 
of  the  people  of  Ohio. 

Whatever  the  motive,  plans  were  laid  for  an  exhaustive  can- 
vass of  the  state.  Mr.  Hanna  himself  was  to  put  in  six  weeks 
on  the  stump,  and  he  was  to  be  accompanied  at  times,  not 
merely  by  Senator  Foraker  and  Colonel  Herrick,  but  by  many 
prominent  speakers  from  other  states,  including  several  cabinet 
officers.  Mr.  Dick  wrote  on  behalf  of  Mr.  Hanna  to  all  Con- 
gressmen both  in  the  Senate  and  the  House  whose  services  might 
be  useful.  Those  who  offered  to  help,  and  who  testified  in  word 
and  action  to  the  extreme  importance  of  a  decisive  victory  for 
Senator  Hanna,  were  not  confined  to  Mr.  Hanna's  personal 
friends  and  followers.  They  included  men  like  Senator  Dolli- 
ver,  Senator  Beveridge  and  Senator  Clapp,  who  at  a  later  date 
repudiated  "  stand-pat "  politics.  But  the  most  interesting 
letter  which  was  received  in  answer  to  requests  of  assistance 
came  from  the  veteran  Senator  George  F.  Hoar  —  the  man  who 
represented  better  than  any  other  man  the  best  traditions  of  the 
Senate  and  of  the  Republican  party. 

Mr.  Hoar  had  not  been  asked  to  speak,  but  the  Cleveland 
Leader  had  requested  him  to  contribute  a  letter  in  support  of 
Mr.  Hanna's  candidacy.  Mr.  Hoar  upon  receipt  of  the  request 
sent  the  following  private  letter  to  Mr.  Hanna,  explaining  the 
reasons  for  refusing  a  public  testimonial :  — 

"WORCESTER,  MASS.,  Aug.  31, 1903. 
"DEAR  MR.  HANNA:  — 

"I  have  received  the  enclosed  document  from  Mr.  Starek. 
There  is  nobody  living  who  feels  more  strongly  the  value  of 
your  public  service  to  the  country  than  I  do.  I  am  afraid  you, 
with  your  modest  appreciation  of  yourself,  would  think  I  was 
inclined  to  flattery  if  I  were  to  state  it  to  you  as  strongly  as  I 
have  been  in  the  habit  of  stating  it  to  other  people  when  some 
fit  occasion  has  arisen.  It  is  very  seldom  that  men  who  bring 


432       MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

to  the  public  service  the  wisdom  gained  by  long  practice  and 
most  successful  experience  in  business  affairs  combine  with  it 
the  capacity  for  clear  and  powerful  statement  in  debate  or  that 
they  are  wise  counsellors  in  political  matters  outside  of  their 
own  calling  in  life.  You  have  no  superior  among  your  asso- 
ciates in  the  Senate  in  these  things."  Then  Mr.  Hoar  goes 
on  to  explain  that  he  had  always  felt  obliged  to  refuse  such 
requests  and  stated  his  reasons  —  which  do  not  concern  us  here. 
Another  private  testimonial,  which  was  never  published,  came 
from  Senator  Spooner.  "I  am  extremely  anxious,"  he  writes, 
"that  you  should  be  reflected.  Your  business  experience, 
your  desire  for  the  prosperity  and  well-being  of  the  country,  your 
excellent  judgment  and  aptitude  for  national  legislation,  your 
sense  of  responsibility  as  a  Senator  which  leads  you  to  give, 
without  stint  or  regard  for  your  own  comfort,  active  study  and 
work  to  the  discharge  of  the  duties  of  the  Senatorship,  your 
personal  popularity  in  the  Senate,  and  your  ability  as  a  debater, — 
all  combine  in  my  judgment  to  make  you  a  powerful,  patriotic 
and  therefore  valuable  factor  in  national  legislation  and  in 
determining  our  public  policy.  A  failure  to  reelect  you  to  the 
Senate  I  should  esteem  a  public  misfortune." 

Among  his  embarrassments  at  this  critical  moment  was  the 
state  of  his  health.  He  passed  the  greater  part  of  July  on  a 
friend's  yacht,  in  order  to  gather  strength  for  the  coming  cam- 
paign. Nevertheless  he  was  laid  up  in  bed  for  some  days,  just 
before  he  opened  his  speaking  tour;  and  throughout  the  fall 
he  was  far  from  well.  A  few  weeks  on  the  stump  were  no  longer 
an  exciting  and  refreshing  episode  in  his  life.  His  increasing 
infirmities  made  the  discomforts  and  the  constant  pressure  of 
a  long  campaign  irksome  and  even  distressing.  His  state  of 
mind  is  indicated  by  the  following  incident.  One  evening  after 
a  peculiarly  hard  day's  work  in  cold  autumn  weather,  and  when 
he  had  returned  to  his  private  car  and  was  finally  warm  and 
comfortable  enough  to  regain  something  like  his  ordinary 
spirits,  he  told  his  companions  (according  to  Colonel  Herrick) 
the  following  story.  During  one  of  the  battles  of  the  Civil 
War  a  soldier  was  seen  walking  away  from  the  front  in  an 
utterly  dishevelled  condition.  He  had  been  wounded  before 
he  left  the  firing  line.  He  had  been  accidently  run  down  and 


THE   CAMPAIGN  OF   1903  433 

trampled  on  by  a  squadron  of  cavalry.  His  face  was  bloody. 
An  arm  hung  limp  from  his  side.  He  could  scarcely  drag  one 
leg  after  another.  There  seemed  to  be  no  part  of  his  body 
which  was  not  the  worse  for  war  and  wear.  As  he  hobbled 
dejectedly  along,  he  was  heard  to  mutter:  "I  love  my  country. 
I  would  fight  for  her.  I  would  bleed  for  her.  Yes,  I  would  even 
die  for  her.  But  I'm  damned  if  I  ever  love  another  country." 

In  the  speeches  made  during  the  fall  of  1903,  Senator  Hanna 
added  nothing  essential  to  the  past  statements  of  his  political 
and  economic  ideas,  but  he  placed  them  before  his  public  in  an 
unusually  effective  manner.  Always  an  easy  speaker  and  im- 
pressive because  of  his  powerful  personality,  he  had  gained  by 
virtue  of  long  practice  an  increasing  mastery  over  his  own 
methods  of  utterance.  While  his  speeches  were  still  impro- 
vised and  they  still  rambled  along  a  little  incoherently,  his 
individual  sentences  became  more  consecutive  and  precise,  and 
certain  phrases  usually  appear  at  the  beginning  or  in  the  body 
of  his  speeches,  which  indicate  an  increasing  tendency  to  pre- 
pare in  advance  effective  methods  of  expression.  But  above 
all  they  benefited  from  the  fact  that  his  mind  had  become 
gradually  stored  with  weightier  matter.  When  he  was  very 
much  stirred,  he  no  longer  expressed  his  feelings  merely  with 
a  kind  of  explosive  energy.  He  could  rise,  not  quite  to  elo- 
quence, but  to  some  dignity  of  utterance,  which  made  his  evi- 
dent sincerity  still  more  impressive.  His  own  public  life  was 
becoming  identified  with  higher  issues,  and  was  reaching  a 
higher  plane  of  verbal  expression. 

On  November  3  the  people  of  Ohio  gave  to  Mr.  Hanna  the 
overwhelming  victory  and  the  complete  vindication  which 
he  so  ardently  desired.  Colonel  Herrick  was  elected  by  a 
majority  of  over  100,000.  In  1901  Senator  Foraker  had  ob- 
tained thirty-five  more  legislative  votes  than  had  his  Demo- 
cratic opponent,  which  was  considered  extraordinary.  The 
Legislature  elected  in  the  fall  of  1903  contained  a  Republican 
majority  of  91  on  joint  ballot;  and  Mr.  Hanna  was  after- 
wards elected  by  an  actual  majority  of  90  —  receiving  115 
votes  to  his  opponent's  25.  One  of  the  most  gratifying  aspects 
of  the  returns  was  the  triumph  in  Mr.  Hanna's  own  county 
of  Cuyahoga.  Mr.  Herrick's  plurality  over  Johnson  was  no 

2F 


434      MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

less  than  8520,  and  every  candidate  on  the  Republican  ticket 
was  elected  by  a  comfortable  margin  —  and  this  in  spite  of  Mr. 
Johnson's  equally  emphatic  success  only  a  few  months  before. 
Evidently  many  thousand  votes  which  had  been  cast  for  Mr. 
Johnson  on  local  issues  were  cast  for  Mr.  Hanna  on  state 
and  national  issues.  So  far  as  any  political  leader's  career  can 
be  justified  by  the  approval  of  his  own  people,  that  justifica- 
tion was  Senator  Hanna's.  The  issue  was  as  sharply  drawn 
for  and  against  him  as  it  had  been  in  1897.  His  future  career 
and  his  political  leadership  of  the  state  were  at  stake.  He 
could  no  longer  be  denounced  as  a  labor-crusher ;  but  the  voters 
were  asked  to  reject  him  as  plutocrat  and  a  friend  of  privilege 
in  American  politics  and  business.  If  the  campaign  had  taken 
place  in  1910  instead  of  1903,  he  could  not  have  been  any  more 
sharply  attacked  for  his  friendliness  to  the  "  Interests."  But 
the  people  of  Ohio  refused  to  believe  that  the  public  interest 
was  not  among  the  interests  he  served.  They  declared  at  the 
polls  their  enthusiastic  and  overwhelming  confidence  in  the 
integrity  and  good  faith  of  his  political  leadership. 

Early  in  November,  when  the  results  of  his  election  were 
known,  Mr.  Hanna  received  hundreds  of  letters  congratulating 
him  on  his  success.  These  letters  came  from  every  state  in 
the  Union  and  were  written  by  all  classes  of  people  —  bankers, 
merchants,  manufacturers,  union  leaders,  professional  men, 
"drummers,"  clergymen,  college  presidents  and  railroad  em- 
ployees. Half  a  dozen  notes  of  congratulation  were  even  received 
from  Roman  Catholic  convents.  Qne  of  the  most  interesting 
and  instructive  incidental  phases  of  Mr.  Hanna's  political  career 
was  the  support  he  obtained  from  prominent  Catholics.  Arch- 
bishop Ireland  was  in  frequent  correspondence  with  him  and 
used  his  influence  on  Mr.  Hanna's  behalf.  But  this  alliance 
did  not  prevent  Mr.  Hanna  from  getting  along  equally  well 
with  the  Salvation  Army,  several  of  whose  leaders  congratu- 
lated him  on  his  reelection.  There  seems  to  have  been  an 
instinctive  gravitation  towards  Mr.  Hanna  on  the  part  of  men 
who  represented  powerful  organizations  and  believed  in  the 
principle  and  method  of  organization  —  no  matter  whether  the 
purpose  of  the  organization  was  religious,  social,  political, 
industrial  or  labor. 


THE   CAMPAIGN   OF    1903  435 

A  large  proportion  of  the  letters  congratulating  Mr.  Hanna 
on  his  election  urged  him  to  become  a  candidate  for  the  Presi- 
dency. The  decisive  and  overwhelming  character  of  his  per- 
sonal victory  strengthened  enormously  the  hands  of  those  of  his 
friends  who  wished  to  make  him  President  —  whether  he  would 
or  not.  They  had  been  discouraged  by  the  Roosevelt  in- 
dorsement, which  had  been  extorted  from  the  Ohio  Convention 
in  the  spring,  but  they  were  merely  biding  their  time.  Through- 
out the  campaign  he  had  been  repeatedly  hailed  at  public  meet- 
ings and  dinners  as  the  next  President  of  the  United  States  — 
although  this  fact  was  usually  suppressed  in  the  newspaper 
reports.  It  was  part  of  his  policy  never  to  call  public  attention 
to  these  compliments  either  by  encouraging  or  discouraging 
public  comment.  But  they  were  a  matter  of  general  gossip, 
and  his  silence  when  actually  under  this  kind  of  fire  puzzled 
his  friends  and  alarmed  the  supporters  of  Mr.  Roosevelt. 

The  business  men  in  New  York,  who  were  determined  to 
push  Mr.  Hanna's  candidacy,  began  immediately  after  the  elec- 
tion seriously  to  organize.  A  committee  was  appointed.  One 
hundred  thousand  dollars  were  raised  and  two  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand  dollars  pledged  for  preliminary  expenses.  Prom- 
ises were  given  of  a  much  larger  campaign  fund  to  be  sub- 
scribed whenever  necessary.  A  comprehensive  survey  of  the 
whole  field  was  made  and  a  careful  calculation  of  the  number 
of  delegates  which  they  could  reasonably  count  upon  getting. 
The  outlook  was  considered  to  be  very  encouraging.  They 
expected  in  the  first  place  to  secure  a  united  delegation  from 
Ohio.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  Mr.  Roosevelt  was  a  New 
Yorker,  they  counted  on  a  united  delegation  from  that  state. 
The  local  machinery  was  controlled  by  Governor  Odell,  who 
was  favorable  to  Mr.  Hanna  and  had  promised  to  use  his  in- 
fluence on  behalf  of  their  candidate.  In  Pennsylvania  Senator 
Quay  was  for  Roosevelt,  but  they  believed  that  they  had  a  good 
chance  of  dividing  the  state.  They  were  assured  also  that  the 
delegation  from  Indiana  could  be  secured.  After  an  investi- 
gation of  conditions  in  the  South,  they  were  hopeful  of  obtaining 
two-thirds  of  the  delegates  from  that  region.  In  case  all  these 
calculations  were  sound,  it  looked  like  a  sure  thing. 

Preparations  as  elaborate  as  these  were  sure  to  reach  the 


436      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

ears  of  the  President  and  his  friends;  and  among  Mr.  Roose- 
velt's ostensible  friends  at  this  time  were  certain  of  Mr.  Hanna's 
enemies  —  such  as  Senators  Foraker  and  Quay.  They  were 
not  slow  to  use  the  situation  to  embroil  the  relations  between 
the  two  men.  It  was  easy  to  suggest  that  the  spontaneous 
expressions  of  opinion  favorable  to  Mr.  Hanna's  candidacy 
which  were  constantly  breaking  out,  were  secretly  inspired 
and  encouraged  by  Mr.  Hanna  or  his  immediate  lieutenants; 
and  the  ambiguity  of  Mr.  Hanna's  public  attitude  gave  color 
to  these  suspicions.  Mr.  Roosevelt  was  naturally  infected 
by  them.  If  Mr.  Hanna  did  not,  as  he  had  frequently 
stated,  intend  to  be  a  candidate,  why  did  he  not  suppress  the 
dubious  preparations  of  his  friends  by  declaring  unequivocally 
and  publicly  that  he  was  in  favor  of  the  only  alternative  candi- 
date ? 

There  was  danger  for  a  while  of  an  open  break  between  the 
two  men.  Mr.  Hanna's  enemies  tried  to  precipitate  a  fight 
by  advising  the  President  to  ignore  Mr.  Hanna  in  certain 
matters  connected  with  patronage  in  Ohio.  Senator  Foraker  had 
in  his  own  opinion  always  been  deprived  of  his  fair  share  of 
these  Federal  offices.  As  long  as  McKinley  lived,  he  had, "of 
course,  no  means  of  putting  up  an  effective  fight.  He  had  to 
take  what  he  could  get,  and  he  attributed  to  Mr.  Hanna's  in- 
fluence some  of  Mr.  McKinley 's  personal  appointments.  Being 
both  a  proud  and  ambitious  man,  he  chafed  at  a  situation 
which  was  making  his  political  career  end  in  a  cul-de-sac.  He 
had  skilfuly  managed  in  the  spring  of  1903  to  use  the  question 
of  Mr.  Roosevelt's  indorsement  as  a  weapon  with  which  to 
attack  Mr.  Hanna;  and  although  winning  a  technical  victory, 
he  failed  in  his  deeper  purpose,  which  was  to  bring  about  an 
open  breach  between  his  colleague  and  the  administration. 
While  the  President  was  in  a  suspicious  state  of  mind  about 
Mr.  Hanna,  Senator  Foraker  very  nearly  persuaded  him  to 
make  certain  appointments'  to  the  Postmasterships  of  Napoleon 
and  Lima  which  would  have  been  offensive  to  the  junior  Senator. 
Mr.  Hanna  was  well  aware  of  these  machinations.  There  is 
evidence  that,  had  he  lived,  he  would  at  the  next  favorable 
opportunity  have  done  his  utmost  to  make  Mr.  Foraker  there- 
after a  negligible  factor  in  the  politics  of  Ohio.  •-; 


THE    CAMPAIGN   OF   1903  437 

While  the  gentlemen  mentioned  and  others  were  trying  to 
convince  the  President  that  Mr.  Hanna  was  acting  in  bad  faith, 
certain  friends  of  both  Mr.  Roosevelt  and  Mr.  Hanna  were 
working  hard  to  prevent  the  breach  from  widening.  Among 
them  was  Mr.  George  B.  Cortelyou,  who,  as  Mr.  McKinley's 
private  secretary,  had  been  close  to  Mr.  Hanna,  and  who  was 
now  secretary  of  the  new  Department  of  Commerce  and  Labor 
in  President  Roosevelt's  Cabinet.  Being  disgusted  at  an 
absurd  tale  which  had  been  carried  to  him,  concerning  some 
remarks  which  Mr.  Hanna  had  been  reported  to  make  about 
the  President,  he  decided  to  get  at  the  root  of  the  matter.  With 
this  intention  he  went  to  see  the  Senator  at  the  Arlington  Hotel, 
and  the  two  had  a  long  interview.  Mr.  Hanna  declared  with- 
out qualification  that  he  was  not  a  candidate,  that  he  never 
had  been  and  never  would  be  a  candidate.  He  had  assured 
the  President  of  that  fact,  and  he  was  offended  because  his  word 
was  doubted.  He  was  tired,  he  said,  of  going  to  the  White 
House  every  day,  of  putting  his  hand  on  his  heart  and  being 
sworn  in.  It  was  not  a  dignified  thing  for  him  to  do.  He 
had  played  fair  with  the  President,  and  he  thought  that  Mr. 
Roosevelt  ought  to  accept  his  word  at  its  face  value. 

Some  days  later  Mr.  Cortelyou  went  to  see  the  President  and 
found  him  in  conference  with  three  friends,  one  of  whom  was 
a  member  of  the  Cabinet  and  another  a  Senator.  The  burden 
of  the  conversation  was  that  Mr.  Hanna's  conduct  was  suspi- 
cious and  ambiguous.  The  President  sprang  from  his  chair, 
walked  nervously  to  the  open  fire  and  then  back  to  his  desk, 
saying  in  his  emphatic  way,  "Yes,  Mr.  Hanna  ought  to  make 
an  unequivocal  public  statement  of  his  position."  At  this  point 
Mr.  Cortelyou  broke  in,  and  said  :  "You  gentlemen  do  not  know 
what  you  are  talking  about.  I  know  that  Mr.  Hanna  has  no 
intention  of  being  a  candidate  for  President."  Mr.  Roosevelt 
accepted  this  assurance  as  authentic,  because  he  had  heard  of 
Mr.  Cortelyou's  recent  interview  with  Mr.  Hanna.  That  an 
open  breach  was  avoided  was  due  chiefly  to  the  good  offices  of 
such  men  as  Mr.  Cortelyou  and  Mr.  James  R.  Garfield,  then 
Commissioner  of  Corporations.  The  latter  was  in  close  com- 
munication both  with  Mr.  Hanna  and  the  President.  While 
he  thought  the  Senator  should  make  a  public  statement  which 


438      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

would  clear  up  the  ambiguities  of  the  situation,  he  always 
credited  Mr.  Hanna  with  acting  in  perfect  good  faith,  and  he 
always  advised  Mr.  Roosevelt  to  that  effect.  Mr.  Theodore 
E.  Burton  also  contributed  effectively  to  the  maintenance  of 
good  relations  by  advising  Mr.  Roosevelt  about  Ohio  appoint- 
ments in  a  sense  which  may  have  prevented  the  President 
from  offending  Mr.  Hanna. 

It  is,  of  course,  easy  to  understand  the  President's  predica- 
ment. He  wanted  the  nomination  and  had  good  grounds  for 
wanting  it.  Mr.  Hanna  was  the  only  man  who  could  have 
prevented  him  from  getting  it.  What  Mr.  Roosevelt  desired, 
consequently,  above  all  things  was  that  Mr.  Hanna  should 
declare  himself  explicitly,  not  merely  about  his  own  personal 
candidacy,  but  hi  reference  to  other  candidates  for  the  office. 
A  man  of  the  President's  disposition,  to  whom  suspense  which 
cannot  be  exorcised  by  vigorous  and  decisive  action  is  intoler- 
able, almost  preferred  an  open  fight  to  a  prolonged  condition 
of  tantalizing  doubt.  He  tried  in  every  way  to  induce  Mr. 
Hanna  either  to  indorse  his  candidacy  or  explicitly  to  disap- 
prove of  it.  His  telegram  on  the  occasion  of  the  Ohio  Con- 
vention of  1903  was  his  first  attempt  to  force  the  issue.  Later 
in  the  fall  of  the  year  with  the  same  end  in  view  he  repeat- 
edly urged  Mr.  Hanna  to  accept  a  reappointment  as  Chair- 
man of  the  National  Committee.  But  all  to  no  purpose.  For 
reasons  which  will  be  discussed  later,  Mr.  Hanna  would  not 
commit  himself  in  public  either  hi  favor  of  the  President  or 
against  him. 

Yet  without  the  shadow  of  a  doubt,  Mr.  Hanna  neither  in- 
tended to  be  a  candidate  himself  nor  did  he  intend  to  oppose 
Mr.  Roosevelt's  nomination.  There  are  a  number  of  letters 
in  existence,  written  to  correspondents  with  whom  he  was  on 
terms  of  the  utmost  intimacy.  Not  one  of  them  wavers  a 
hair's-breadth  from  the  assertion  that  he  was  not  and  would 
not  be  a  candidate.  Not  one  affords  the  slightest  intimation 
that  he  intended  to  oppose  Mr.  Roosevelt's  selection.  State- 
ments about  Mr.  Hanna's  attitude  have  been  taken  from  all 
of  his  confidential  friends.  None  of  them  ever  heard  him  sug- 
gest anything  favorable  to  his  own  or  necessarily  inimical  to 
Mr.  Roosevelt's  candidacy.  Mr.  Cornelius  N.  Bliss,  than 


THE    CAMPAIGN   OF   1903  439 

whom  no  friend  was  more  affectionately  intimate  with  the 
Senator,  asserts  that  the  burden  of  all  of  Mr.  Hanna's  conversa- 
tion with  him  about  the  matter  was:  " Roosevelt  is  to  be  nomi- 
nated. There  is  no  question  about  it.  I  have  never  had  any 
desire  or  ambition  for  the  nomination,  and  under  no  circum- 
stances would  I  accept."  One  day  when  the  two  were  sitting 
together  in  the  Waldorf,  a  "very  influential  man"  turned  to 
Mr.  Bliss  and  said,  "  You  know,  we  are  going  to  nominate  Mr. 
Hanna  for  President."  "You  are  not,"  replied  Mr.  Hanna. 
"I  am  not  going  to  have  anything  to  do  with  it."  Mr.  Charles 
F.  Dick's  testimony  absolutely  coincides  with  that  of  Mr.  Bliss. 
One  of  the  closest  friends  of  Mr.  Hanna  in  the  Senate  was 
N.  B.  Scott  of  West  Virginia.  His  public  attitude  in  respect 
to  the  nomination  gave  the  joint  friends  of  Mr.  Roosevelt  and 
Mr.  Hanna  a  good  deal  of  trouble,  because  of  statements  which 
in  their  opinion  might  mean  that  Mr.  Hanna  was  a  candidate 
under  cover.  On  Dec.  23,  1903,  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Hanna  a 
letter,  of  which  the  following  are  the  essential  sentences :  — 

(Personal  and  Confidential) 
"  MY  DEAR  MR.  HANNA  :  — 

"  No  man  on  earth  has  any  better  opinion  of  your  good  judgment 
and  hard  sense  than  I  have,  but  I  do  believe  you  are  making  a  mistake. 
To  my  mind  it  is  a  foregone  conclusion  that  if  we  renominate  Roosevelt 
it  means  defeat.  Are  you  going  to  accept  the  responsibility  of  allowing 
the  Republican  party  to  go  to  defeat  ?  .  .  .  Or  if  this  man  is  reflected, 
what  kind  of  an  administration  shall  we  have  ?  Shall  we  not  have  the 
Republican  party,  at  the  end  of  four  years,  in  the  same  condition  that 
President  Cleveland  had  the  Democratic  party  ? 

"  I  want  you  to  sit  down  and  pray  with  yourself  for  an  hour  and  a  half, 
as  we  used  to  do  in  the  Quaker  meetings,  and  then  ask  yourself  whether 
you  are  doing  your  duty  to  the  country  and  to  your  party  by  refusing 
either  to  allow  yourself  to  be  a  candidate  or  to  name  some  other  man.  I 
believe  that  if  you  will  suggest  the  name  of  Cornelius  N.  Bliss,  Senator 
Fairbanks  or  a  number  of  other  good  men,  one  of  them  can  be  nominated 
and  elected.  .  .  .  Let  me  hear  from  you  in  confidence.  You  have  no 
idea  of  the  amount  of  pressure  that  is  brought  to  bear  on  me  to  have 
you  say  something. 

"  Your  old  friend,  as  ever, 

"N.  B.  SCOTT." 

To  this  letter  Mr.  Hanna  replied  on  December  30:  — 


440      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

"My  DEAR  SENATOR:  — 

"  I  have  just  received  your  personal  and  confidential  letter  of  the  23d 
inst.,  and  it  is  needless  for  me  to  say  to  you  how  much  I  appreciate  this 
latest  expression  of  your  personal  regard.  My  recent  illness  has  merely 
been  one  more  admonition  and  warning  to  take  care  of  myself  and  em- 
phasizes the  fact  that  my  own  interest  forbids  the  course  you  advise.  I 
do  not  see  how  I  can  be  held  responsible  for  the  situation  you  describe. 
Neither  can  I  see  my  way  clear  to  being  the  instrument  to  create 
dissension,  discord  and  confusion  in  the  party.  I  have  decided  that 
the  best  thing  for  me  to  do  is  to  say  nothing  more  whatever  on  the 
subject.  I  believe  that  you  will  agree  with  me  that  this  is  the  wisest 
course. 

"  Truly  yours, 

"  M.  A.  HANNA." 

Two  days  after  the  letter  to  Mr.  Scott  was  written,  Colonel 
Oliver  H.  Payne  arrived  in  Cleveland  on  a  secret  mission  to 
Mr.  Hanna.  He  was  a  member  of  the  committee  which  had 
been  formed  in  New  York  to  promote  Mr.  Hanna's  nomination. 
He  wanted  an  interview,  in  order  to  place  before  their  candidate 
the  results  of  their  work  up  to  date.  He  had  a  long  conference 
with  Mr.  Hanna,  who,  after  hearing  what  he  had  to  say,  re- 
peated that  he  could  not  and  would  not  be  a  candidate.  He 
said  that  he  wanted  to  remain  in  the  Senate  and  that  many 
questions  in  which  he  was  deeply  interested  required  his  per- 
sonal attention  in  that  body.  His  whole  life  and  all  his  interest 
were  wrapped  up  in  the  work  of  the  Civic  Federation.  He 
would  rather  succeed  in  bringing  capital  and  labor  into  cordial 
relations  with  each  other  and  open  the  way  to  permanent  in- 
dustrial peace  and  consequently  to  indefinite  future  prosperity 
than  to  be  President  of  the  United  States.  He  feared  that  in 
case  he  became  a  candidate  he  would  be  misrepresented  and 
that  he  would  be  accused  of  using  the  Civic  Federation  to  pro- 
mote his  political  fortunes.  He  would  not  put  himself  in  a 
position  which  might  cause  any  reasonable  man  to  misconstrue 
his  work  on  behalf  of  labor.  He  wound  up  by  declaring  that 
the  state  of  his  health  would  not  permit  him  to  enter  the  contest 
and  that  the  work  of  the  campaign  would  kill  him.  When  Colonel 
Payne  urged  in  response  that  he  would  not  be  compelled  to 
make  a  campaign,  that  his  name  would  sweep  the  Convention, 
that  his  friends  would  relieve  him  of  all  labor,  and  that  all  they 


THE    CAMPAIGN   OF    1903  441 

wanted  was  an  assurance  that  they  could  go  ahead  without 
his  disapproval,  he  refused  to  budge  an  inch  from  his  former 
assertions.  Colonel  Payne  returned  to  New  York  very  much 
disappointed,  but  not  discouraged  to  the  point  of  abandoning 
the  fight. 

Only  one  more  item  need  be  added  to  the  foregoing  exhibit. 
Mr.  Elmer  Dover,  Mr.  Banna's  private  secretary,  states  that 
probably  Mr.  Hanna's  closest  associate  in  the  Senate  was  Orville 
Platt  of  Connecticut.  Now  Mr.  Platt,  unlike  some  other 
friends  of  Mr.  Hanna,  believed  not  only  that  the  President 
should  be  nominated,  but  that  he  was  the  only  man  who  could 
be  elected.  Late  in  November,  1903,  after  Mr.  Hanna  had 
returned  to  Washington,  Senator  Platt  wrote  to  a  friend  in 
Connecticut,  who  did  not  like  the  talk  about  Mr.  Hanna's 
candidacy :  — 

"  If  I  understand  the  situation,  Mr.  Hanna  is  not  a  candidate  for  the 
Presidency,  will  not  be,  and  deplores  all  this  talk ;  but  how  can  he  stop 
it  ?  That  there  is  an  opposition  to  the  nomination  of  President  Roose- 
velt is  undoubtedly  true.  It  is  not  very  extensive  or  very  influential, 
but  it  is  noisy,  and  in  my  judgment  will  utterly  fail  when  the  Conven- 
tion is  held  —  indeed,  I  doubt  if  it  manifests  itself  then.  It  comes  from 
both  ends  of  the  party  —  from  the  moneyed  influences  in  Wall  Street 
and  the  agitators  in  the  labor  movement  —  one  as  much  as  the  other. 
Each  of  these  elements  wishes  to  force  the  President  to  make  terms  with 
them,  but  he  will  not  do  it.  I  think  I  know  that  Senator  Hanna  does 
not  sympathize  with  this  in  the  least.  I  have  a  higher  regard  and  more 
genuine  respect  for  him  than  you  seem  to  have.  He  is  a  straight- 
forward, earnest,  truthful  man,  who  acts  from  conviction,  fears  no  one, 
and  makes  no  effort  improperly  to  conciliate  people  who  disagree  with 
him.  He  is  very  much  like  President  Roosevelt  in  this  respect."  (P. 
515,  "An  Old-fashioned  Senator.") 

Towards  the  end  the  relation  between  the  President  and 
Senator  Hanna  improved,  but  they  never  again  became  en- 
tirely satisfactory.  They  could  not  become  so  until  the  ques- 
tion of  the  nomination  was  settled.  The  enemies  of  both  men 
persisted  in  trying  to  create  ill-feeling.  The  New  York  Sun, 
for  instance,  printed  a  story  about  some  reported  utterance 
of  the  President  that  he  would  soon  make  the  Senator  either 
fish  or  cut  bait;  and  the  story  was  told  so  circumstantially 


442      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

that  Mr.  Roosevelt  wrote  to  Mr.  Hanna  a  denial  of  its  truth. 
In  case  the  Senator  had  not  been  taken  seriously  ill,  there  is 
no  telling  how  the  business  would  have  ended. 

Inasmuch  as  Senator  Hanna  had  decided  absolutely  never 
to  accept  the  nomination  —  except,  perhaps,  in  the  impossible 
contingency  of  its  being  offered  to  him  by  acclamation  —  what 
is  the  explanation  of  his  refusal  to  publish  his  private  opinion 
that  the  President  was  bound  to  be  nominated  ?  The  reasons 
he  usually  gives  are  not  quite  convincing.  In  the  spring  of  1903 
they  had  a  good  deal  of  force.  His  position  and  influence  in  the 
party  were  unique.  He  was  still  its  leader.  As  its  leader  and 
as  Chairman  of  the  National  Committee,  a  declaration  in  favor 
of  any  one  candidate  a  year  in  advance  of  the  National  Con- 
vention might  have  been  unfair  to  other  possible  candidates. 
It  was  his  business  to  represent  the  whole  party.  But  in  No- 
vember, 1903,  the  only  candidates  in  sight  were  the  President  and 
Mr.  Hanna  himself.  An  indorsement  of  Mr.  Roosevelt  could 
injure  no  candidacy  but  his  own,  and  he  did  not  want  and  would 
not  take  the  nomination.  Why  not  accept  the  situation  and  come- 
out  frankly  in  favor  of  the  man  whom  he  believed  would  have 
to  be  nominated?  Prudence  and  a  regard  for  the  interests 
of  the  party  might  have  counselled  such  a  course,  because  the 
crisis  was  creating  a  dangerous  tension  of  private  and  public 
feeling  which  might  almost  any  day  cause  something  to  snap. 

Just  what  Mr.  Banna's  several  motives  were  and  what  was 
their  comparative  force  must  always  be  doubtful;  but  state- 
ments made  to  close  friends  seem  to  justify  the  following  general 
description  of  their  effect.  In  the  first  place,  his  supporters 
in  New  York  may  have  induced  him  to  promise  that,  even 
if  he  would  not  consent  to  be  a  candidate,  he  would  not, 
by  declaring  in  favor  of  Mr.  Roosevelt's  nomination,  extin- 
guish all  hope  of  preventing  it.  He  might  have  made  this 
promise,  not  only  as  a  concession  to  a  group  of  friends  who 
were  working  hard  in  what  they  believed  to  be  his  interest, 
but  because  of  his  own  personal  attitude  towards  the  President. 
While  he  liked  Mr.  Roosevelt  much  more  than  formerly,  and 
while  there  was  respect  and  admiration  mixed  with  his  liking, 
he  shared  to  some  extent  the  feelings  of  his  supporters.  He 
realized  that  the  President  represented  a  theory  of  the  public 


THE   CAMPAIGN   OF   1903  443 

interest  different  from  his  own, —  a  theory  to  which  he  was 
loath  to  give  even  by  implication  his  public  approval.  For 
the  present  Mr.  Roosevelt  was  bound  by  his  promise  not  to 
depart  from  the  McKinley  policies ;  but  if  he  were  reflected, 
particularly  by  a  decisive  majority,  he  would  be  justified  in 
cutting  loose.  Mr.  Hanna  feared  the  effect  of  such  an  eman- 
cipation upon  the  leadership  of  the  Republican  party  and  the 
policy  of  the  country. 

Inasmuch,  however,  as  he  regarded  Mr.  Roosevelt's  nomi- 
nation as  inevitable  and  had  no  intention  of  opposing  it,  what 
did  he  expect  to  gain  by  holding  back  ?  The  question  is  diffi- 
cult to  answer,  because  Mr.  Hanna  in  all  probability  did  not 
clearly  define  to  himself  his  own  motives  and  intentions.  It 
looks,  however,  as  if  he  wanted  to  make  the  President  feel  and 
respect  his  power  —  not  with  the  purpose  of  driving  any  bargain, 
but  with  the  general  idea  of  keeping  his  personal  independence 
and  so  far  as  possible  his  leadership  of  the  party.  Whatever 
the  future  had  in  store  for  the  President,  for  the  organization 
and  for  himself,  it  was  essential  from  his  point  of  view  that 
conservative  Republicanism  should  under  the  new  regime  be 
kept  somewhat  separate  and  be  strengthened  in  its  independence. 
He  knew  that  President  Roosevelt  would  do  much  to  avoid 
splitting  the  party;  and  he  may  have  thought  that  he  would 
be  able  to  make  better  terms  after  the  election,  in  case  he  con- 
tinued for  the  present  a  demonstration  of  his  personal  power. 
He  understood  much  better  than  did  many  of  his  own  supporters 
Mr.  Roosevelt's  strength  with  public  opinion,  and  he  knew 
how  much  of  an  increase  of  prestige  would  follow  from  a  tri- 
umphant election.  He  did  not  want  the  victory  —  if  and  when 
it  came  —  to  be  merely  Mr.  Roosevelt's. 

Finally  personal  feelings  and  motives  were  involved.  He 
had  never  forgiven  the  way  in  which  an  indorsement  had  been 
extorted  by  the  President  from  the  Ohio  Convention  of  1903. 
He  had  been  crowded  into  a  corner,  and  obliged  to  choose 
between  a  breach  in  the  party  and  a  personal  humiliation.  He 
resented  it.  He  resented  also  the  efforts  which  were  being 
made  to  force  him  prematurely  on  board  the  triumphal  car 
of  another  candidate.  He  felt  that  his  independence  ought 
to  be  respected  and  recognized  without  exposing  him  to  sus- 


444      MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS  LIFE   AND   WORK 

picions  of  bad  faith.  He  may  even  have  enjoyed  the  ferment 
of  gossip,  expectations,  hopes  and  fears  which  his  own  much 
discouraged  candidacy  had  created.  If  he  was  not  to  be  Presi- 
dent, he  could  hardly  avoid  some  satisfaction  and  amusement 
in  watching  the  ghost  of  his  chance  to  be  President  haunt  the 
corridors  of  the  White  House  and  at  times  hover  ominously 
over  the  whole  political  landscape. 

The  question  remains,  whether,  even  if  his  health  had  not 
forbidden  him  to  be  a  candidate,  he  would  have  considered 
any  more  favorably  the  solicitations  of  his  New  York  friends. 
All  who  are  most  familiar  with  Mr.  Raima's  attitude  agree 
that  it  would  not.  No  doubt  many  of  the  reasons  which  he 
gave  for  not  wanting  to  be  President  could  have  been  over- 
come. His  assertion,  for  instance,  that  he  preferred  his  pe- 
culiarly influential  position  in  the  Senate  to  the  work  of  Presi- 
dent was  sincere;  but  his  unquestionable  satisfaction  with  his 
work  and  power  as  Senator  would  scarcely  have  prevented 
him  from  assuming  the  more  irksome  office,  but  the  one  which 
offered  the  greater  opportunities  of  personal  effectiveness  and 
renown.  He  was  also  sincere  in  stating  that  he  would  not 
abandon  his  work  on  the  Civic  Federation  even  to  be  President. 
He  was  wrapped  up  heart  and  soul  in  that  work.  He  had  in 
his  own  mind  a  definite  program  of  gradual  development, 
which  was  to  last  over  many  years,  and  which  was  to  culminate 
in  nothing  less  than  a  permanent  peace  between  capital  and 
labor.  He  really  hoped  and  expected  to  accomplish  some  such 
result,  and  had  he  succeeded,  his  fame  would  certainly  have 
been  more  permanent  and  glorious  than  any  which  could  re- 
sult from  a  few  years  as  President.  But  even  so,  he  might  have 
been  persuaded  that  a  President  could  accomplish  more  to 
carry  on  the  work  of  industrial  conciliation  than  a  Senator  — 
no  matter  how  powerful. 

The  fundamental  consideration,  apart  from  his  health,  which 
probably  determined  his  refusal,  was  a  clear  anticipation  of  the 
consequences  to  his  own  career  and  to  the  Republican  party 
of  an  official  candidacy.  As  I  have  said,  his  sense  of  the  cur- 
rents of  public  opinion  enabled  him  to  understand  better  than 
did  his  supporters  and  friends  the  strength  of  Mr.  Roosevelt 
and  the  basis  of  that  strength.  He  knew  that  instead  of  em- 


THE    CAMPAIGN   OF    1903  445 

barking  on  a  safe  voyage,  he  would  really  be  facing  many 
chances  of  shipwreck  and  the  certainty  of  a  hard  and  perhaps 
a  bitter  fight.  He  realized,  as  he  wrote  to  Senator  Scott,  that 
the  fight  might  drive  a  wedge  into  the  party  whose  strength 
he  had  done  so  much  to  consolidate.  Notwithstanding  his 
close  alliance  with  big  business  interests,  he  had  always  wanted 
to  represent  the  whole  people ;  and  he  may  well  have  shrunk, 
as  a  result  of  a  division  in  the  party,  from  being  forced  to  repre- 
sent, even  in  appearance,  only  a  class  or  factional  interest.  Ap- 
parently he  had  made  up  his  mind,  after  Mr.  McKinley's  assas- 
sination, that  the  Presidency  was  not  for  him — that,  even  though 
he  could  get  it,  the  game,  as  it  had  been  played,  was  not  worth 
the  candle. 

His  political  career,  theretofore,  had  been  a  practically  un- 
interrupted series  of  successes.  Little  by  little  he  had  dis- 
armed much  of  the  opposition  and  prejudice  which  had  greeted 
his  first  appearance  in  politics.  With  no  more  official  power 
than  a  dozen  others  had  possessed,  he  had  won  for  himself,  as 
a  matter  of  personal  prerogative,  a  unique  position  in  the  party 
and  with  the  people.  In  proportion  as  his  power  and  its  re- 
sponsibilities increased,  he  had  sought  to  represent  something 
more  than  a  business  or  a  partisan  interest.  He  had  sought 
to  represent  a  general  popular  interest,  which  embraced  all 
classes  and  all  sections.  He  was  persuading  people  to  believe 
in  his  good  faith  as  a  national  leader.  Why  should  he  risk 
the  most  valued  aspect  of  his  leadership  by  engaging  in  a  nec- 
essarily bitter  and  precarious  fight  —  one  in  which  the  advantage 
of  position  would  be  on  one  side  of  his  opponent,  which  would 
revive  all  the  old  animosities,  and  which,  whether  he  won  or 
lost,  would  leave  him  with  a  divided  following  and  possibly 
a  diminished  prestige.  Even  from  the  point  of  view  of  personal 
ambition,  would  he  not  bulk  larger  in  the  history  of  the  country 
by  remaining  the  indispensable  Prime  Minister  to  any  Republi- 
can President  and  by  broadening  still  farther  the  scope  and 
deepening  the  foundations  of  his  unique  personal  political 
edifice  ? 

I  do  not  wish  to  imply  that  Mr.  Hanna  scorned  the  Presi- 
dency, and  that  in  renouncing  any  attempt  to  get  it  he  was 
not  making  a  sacrifice.  He  had  an  almost  superstitious  respect 


446      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

for  the  office  and  probably  would  have  liked  to  fill  it  more  than 
he  ever  admitted  to  anybody.  But  he  was  not  willing  to  pay 
the  price,  and  in  refusing  to  pay  the  price,  he  should  have  the 
credit,  not  merely  of  a  shrewd  calculation  of  comparative  costs, 
but  of  a  genuine  disposition  towards  personally  disinterested 
action.  No  man  would  fight  harder  for  an  honor  or  a  prize 
to  which  he  believed  himself  fairly  entitled.  No  man  was  more 
modest  and  hesitating  in  claiming  an  honor  to  which  his  title 
was  dubious.  He  renounced  a  contest,  not  only  because  it 
might  cost  him  too  much,  but  also  because  the  party  and  per- 
haps the  country  might  have  to  pay  too  high  a  price.  And 
there  can  be  little  doubt  that,  with  his  usual  insight  into  the 
complexities  of  a  particular  human  situation,  he  had  made  the 
decision  which,  had  he  lived,  would  have  best  contributed  to  his 
cherished  patriotic  and  personal  interests. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

THE  DEATH  OP  MARK  HANNA 

As  has  been  frequently  intimated  in  the  foregoing  pages, 
Mr.  Hanna  had  not  been  for  years  a  thoroughly  well  man. 
Particularly  since  his  entrance  into  politics  the  handicap  of 
•certain  physical  infirmities  had  been  constantly  increasing, 
and  had  been  the  cause  of  grave  alarm  to  his  family  and  friends. 
The  strain  of  his  very  active  and  wearing  political  life  had  mani- 
festly been  telling  on  his  strength.  He  had  been  often  advised 
and  implored  to  go  away  and  take  a  long  rest,  but  he  always 
refused.  He  was  a  man  who  did  not  know  how  to  rest,  and 
who  became  unhappy  whenever  he  was  deprived  of  his  regular 
occupations  and  his  familiar  surroundings. 

He  was  born  with  an  exceptionally  strong  physique,  and 
throughout  his  active  life  could  under  ordinary  circumstances 
stand  an  enormous  amount  of  work  and  strain.  He  was  what 
used  to  be  called  a  sanguine  man  —  that  is,  a  man  of  active 
disposition,  red  blood,  high  spirits  and  unflagging  energy. 
This  gift  of  abundant  energy  was  never  diminished  by  physical 
excesses.  He  was  a  total  abstainer  until  past  forty,  and  there- 
after his  consumption  of  alcohol  was  confined  to  an  occasional 
glass  of  claret  with  his  meals.  He  was  not  even  a  very  large 
eater.  His  usual  breakfast,  for  instance,  consisted  of  a  couple  of 
soft-boiled  eggs.  He  was  not  particularly  addicted  to  tea  or 
coffee,  and  ate  fresh  meat  in  moderation.  His  favorite  dish  of 
meat  was  corned-beef  hash,  which  was  made  for  him  according 
to  a  very  delectable  recipe  by  a  cook  named  Maggie,  who  had 
lived  with  the  family  for  many  years.  One  of  Mr.  Hanna's 
peculiar  ways  of  entertaining  was  to  invite  guests  to  partake 
of  Maggie's  corned-beef  hash  for  breakfast  on  Sunday  morning. 
He  also  liked  chipped  beef,  bacon  and  small  deer-foot  sausages. 
He  was  a  great  bread  eater,  but  had  no  particular  relish  for 
cakes  or  sweets.  The  dessert  which  he  preferred  was  a  plain 

447 


448       MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

rice  pudding  as  prepared  by  his  excellent  cook.  Altogether 
his  appetite  seemed  to  run  in  the  direction  of  starchy  foods,  — 
such  as  green  corn,  among  vegetables,  —  and  whatever  he  liked 
he  liked  very  much.  Perhaps  he  came  nearer  to  excess  in 
smoking  than  in  any  other  physical  habit.  He  had  his  own 
special  brand  of  somewhat  strong  cigars,  which  had  been  care- 
fully selected,  and  of  which  he  consumed  about  a  dozen  a 
day. 

Energetic,  however,  as  he  was  by  disposition,  he  was  not 
physically  an  active  man.  He  belonged  to  the  generation  of 
Americans  who  took  no  exercise.  One  could  not  by  the  ut- 
most effort  of  the  imagination  associate  Mr.  McKinley  and 
Mr.  Hanna  with  a  game  of  tennis;  and  when  a  tennis  player 
was  actually  installed  in  the  White  House,  a  political  revolu- 
tion was  evidently  impending.  Mark  Hanna  did  not  even 
enjoy  open  air  and  the  country.  He  was  essentially  an  indoor 
and  a  city  man.  The  one  kind  of  outdoor  life  which  amused 
him  was  yachting  or  boating  —  particularly  on  the  Lakes.  He 
would  occasionally  take  a  drive,  but  late  in  life  even  this  mild 
form  of  physical  activity  ceased  to  attract.  The  only  stirring 
up  which  his  body  received  came  as  the  incidental  result  of 
the  mental  stimulus  and  excitement  resulting  from  a  keenly 
interesting  occupation.  Public  speaking,  for  instance,  was 
physically  refreshing  to  him,  because  it  afforded  wholesome 
exertion  both  to  body  and  mind. 

There  was  nothing,  however,  in  Mr.  Hanna's  physical  habits 
which  need  have  handicapped  his  work  or  shortened  his  life, 
His  fundamental  trouble  seems  to  have  been  a  legacy  from  the 
attack  of  typhoid  fever  from  which  he  suffered  in  1867.  He 
was  subject  to  attacks  of  congestion,  which  would  send  the 
blood  to  his  head  and  cause  him  to  faint.  Sometimes  they 
would  last  for  several  hours,  throughout  which  his  hands  would 
be  clenched  and  his  body  would  become  rigid.  If  he  passed  a 
year  without  a  spell  of  this  kind,  he  was  lucky.  They  might 
be  caused  by  indigestion,  by  a  cold,  or  even  by  anxiety  or  emo- 
tion. If  he  ate  a  hearty  meal  and  immediately  after  plunged 
into  severe  mental  exertion,  he  was  apt  to  suffer.  The  attacks 
were  not,  however,  regarded  seriously  by  the  family.  They 
usually  yielded  to  simple  remedies,  and  as  soon  as  they  were 


THE    DEATH    OF   MARK   HANNA  449 

over  Mr.  Hanna  immediately  recovered  his  strength  and  was 
up  again  and  doing  business  the  same  day.  They  indicated, 
however,  an  imperfection  in  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  which, 
as  he  grew  older,  might  well  have  other  effects. 

In  1899  his  knees  began  to  give  him  some  trouble.  The 
difficulty  was  diagnosed  as  rheumatism,  but  it  proved  eventu- 
ally to  be  an  increasing  chalky  deposit  on  the  knee  joints, 
which  gradually  affected  his  finger  joints  as  well.  After  this 
ailment  fastened  on  him,  he  was  always  suffering  more  or  less 
pain,  and  when  he  made  speeches  and  was  compelled  to  be  long 
on  his  feet  his  suffering  was  acute.  It  was  to  get  rid  of  this 
discomfort  that  he  went  abroad  in  the  summer  of  1899.  Baths 
at  Aix-les-Bains  were  prescribed,  and  Mr.  Hanna  took  them 
conscientiously  for  three  weeks.  But  he  refused  to  submit 
to  an  after-cure  in  Switzerland,  and  during  the  three  following 
weeks  hurried  rapidly  over  a  large  part  of  Europe.  He  was 
always  a  bad  patient,  just  as  he  was  always  a  man  who  scorned 
to  take  precautions  against  sources  of  contagion  and  infection. 
He  would  not  submit  to  hygienic  dictation  —  even  when  he  was 
threatened  with  illness. 

The  cure  at  Aix  did  him  no  permanent  good,  and  thereafter 
he  suffered  from  minor  ailments  —  none  of  which  prevented 
him  from  continuing  his  work,  but  all  of  which  taken  together 
indicated  that  his  body  was  yielding  under  the  strain  imposed 
by  his  way  of  living.  But  he  was  not  an  apprehensive  man,  and 
he  was  too  much  interested  in  what  he  was  doing  to  listen  to 
any  prudential  advice.  His  wife  soon  began  to  realize  that 
he  was  wound  up  too  tight  and  was  running  too  fast.  She 
tells  of  warning  him.  "I  don't  know  how  you  feel  about  it," 
she  said,  "but  to  me  you  behave  like  a  person  who  is  under 
some  strong  excitement,  who  is  rushing  onward  and  cannot 
stop."  He  admitted  that  she  was  right,  but  he  refused  even 
to  discuss  the  matter  of  drawing  back.  "I  am  going  on,"  was 
his  final  word.  He  continued  his  unremitting  and  almost 
feverish  activity,  and  for  a  while  stood  it  fairly  well.  But  in 
1903  there  were  premonitions  ,of  a  breakdown.  Before  be- 
ginning his  long  and  strenuous  stumping  tour  in  the  fall,  he 
went  off  on  a  yachting  trip  for  a  month.  The  rest  did  him 
little  good,  because  the  boat  was  too  much  in  port,  where  there 
2G 


450       MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND   WORK 

were  people  to  see  and  big  dinners  to  be  eaten.  After  his  re- 
turn to  Cleveland  he  was  confined  to  his  bed  for  a  while,  but 
he  pulled  himself  together,  and  to  his  own  intense  discomfort, 
went  through  the  most  arduous  and  exciting  stumping  tour 
of  his  career.  The  way  in  which  he  sometimes  felt  and  suffered 
during  that  tour  is  indicated  by  the  story  which  he  told  one 
cold  autumn  evening  to  Colonel  Herrick,  and  which  is  related 
in  the  last  chapter. 

After  the  election  his  immediate  presence  in  Washington 
was  required.  An  extra  session  of  Congress  had  been  called 
to  deal  with  Cuban  reciprocity.  At  the  time  he  left  Cleveland 
he  looked  extremely  worn  and  debilitated.  All  his  friends 
urged  him  to  quit.  Mrs.  Hanna,  too,  was  not  well,  and  wanted 
to  remain  at  home.  But  he  insisted  that  both  of  them  should 
go.  He  asserted  that  he  had  plenty  of  strength  for  his  work 
and  that  they  could  save  themselves  by  declining  invitations 
to  dinner.  Such  was  their  understanding,  and  they  acted  up 
to  it.  Between  the  beginning  of  November  and  Christmas 
they  went  out  very  rarely.  On  Tuesday,  December  15,  Mr. 
Hanna  had  a  severe  attack  of  the  grip.  He  had  planned  to 
go  to  New  York  on  Thursday  for  a  meeting  of  the  Civic  Federa- 
tion, and  then  to  join  Mrs.  Hanna  in  Cleveland  for  the  Christ- 
mas holidays.  But  on  Thursday  morning  he  was  so  miserable 
that  it  did  not  look  safe  to  let  him  go  alone.  As  Mrs.  Hanna 
was  in  poor  health,  it  was  decided  that  Miss  Mary  Phelps,  for 
many  years  the  companion  and  friend  of  Mrs.  Hanna,  should 
accompany  him.  Mr.  Hanna  slept  during  the  journey  and 
that  night  had  a  little  fever.  Nevertheless  he  spent  the  whole 
of  Friday  at  the  meeting  of  the  Civic  Federation  and  in  the 
evening  attended  a  dinner  of  the  McKinley  Memorial  Associa- 
tion. His  fever  still  hung  on,  but  it  did  not  prevent  him  from 
continuing  the  next  day  his  attendance  of  the  sessions  of  the 
Federation.  The  dinner  of  that  organization  was  scheduled 
for  the  same  night.  During  the  afternoon  Mr.  Hanna  felt  so 
ill  that  he  decided  to  give  up  the  dinner,  but  to  drop  in  about 
nine  o'clock  and  make  a  short  speech.  After  dinner,  however, 
he  was  taken  with  a  severe  chill,  and  was  put  to  bed.  His 
local  physician,  Dr.  George  E.  Brewer,  dosed  him  with  the 
strongest  stimulants.  The  chill  was  succeeded  by  a  raging 


THE  DEATH  OF  MAKK  HANNA          451 

fever.  At  midnight  his  temperature  was  103J,  and  he  did  not 
sleep  until  towards  morning. 

The  next  day,  however,  his  temperature  returned  to  normal, 
and  he  insisted  upon  going  home  to  Cleveland  for  Christmas. 
Miss  Phelps  protested,  but  he  would  have  his  way.  They 
left  on  Wednesday,  the  twenty-third,  in  the  private  car  of  the 
president  of  the  New  York  Central  Railroad,  and  reached 
home  safely  the  next  day.  On  Christmas  there  was  a  large 
party  for  dinner,  and  on  Sunday  Mr.  Hanna  drove  across 
Cleveland  to  see  his  son,  D.  R.  Hanna.  The  day  after  he  was 
at  his  office  in  the  Perry-Payne  building  and  put  in  an  immense 
amount  of  work  during  the  following  week.  But  on  one  occa- 
sion he  called  for  Scotch  whiskey  to  keep  him  going,  which  was 
unprecedented  with  him.  On  January  4  he  went  to  Chicago 
for  a  visit  to  the  dentist  and  to  engage  his  accommodations  for 
the  approaching  National  Convention.  Miss  Phelps  accom- 
panied him  and  states  that  after  a  short  session  with  the  dentist 
in  the  morning  the  rest  of  the  day  until  after  midnight  was 
spent  in  political  conferences. 

A  few  days  later,  January  12,  found  the  indefatigable  invalid 
in  Columbus,  Ohio,  for  the  purpose  of  being  present  at  his  re- 
election to  the  Senate.  After  the  result  was  announced,  he 
made  the  following  brief  address  to  the  Legislature  —  the  last 
public  utterance  of  his  career :  — 

"Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  of  the  Seventy-sixth  General  Assembly 
of  Ohio :  For  the  great  honor  that  your  action  has  conferred  upon  me 
to-day,  I  offer  my  most  profound  gratitude,  appreciating  the  compli- 
ment, and  may  I  not  say  the  vindication.  I  also  appreciate  the  re- 
sponsibilities which  come  to  me  at  your  hands  by  conferring  upon 
me  this  great  office. 

"  I  am  not  vain  enough  to  assume  that  the  result  of  the  great  victory 
in  Ohio  in  the  last  campaign  was  a  personal  matter,  great  as  has  been 
my  pleasure  in  the  interests  of  the  party  at  such  a  result.  It  is  more 
tribute  to  the  intelligence  of  the  people  of  Ohio,  when  they  were  con- 
fronted by  the  propositions,  such  as  were  made  the  issue  in  that  cam- 
paign. I  say  I  attribute  it  to  their  intelligence,  because  the  argu- 
ments and  pleadings  made  upon  every  issue  were  well  defined.  There 
could  be  no  misunderstanding  as  to  what  they  meant.  The  time  had 
come  in  the  history  of  our  state  when  the  people  were  called  upon 
to  register  their  verdict  upon  great  questions  so  all-important  to  our 


452      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

social  conditions;    the  principles  upon  which  the  government  itself 
had  been  founded  were  on  trial. 

"  Proud  I  am,  my  fellow-citizens,  and  speaking  through  you  members 
of  this  General  Assembly  to  the  people  of  the  whole  state  whom  I  am 
to  represent  in  the  higher  branch  of  Congress,  that  I  go  there  not  as  a 
partisan,  where  the  interests  of  my  state  are  the  issue,  but  as  a  rep- 
resentative of  all  the  people,  as  a  representative  of  all  interests  which 
are  material  to  all  the  people,  as  a  man  to  stand  for  you,  for  what  are 
your  interests  socially,  politically,  industrially  and  commercially." 

The  day,  happy  as  it  was  for  Mr.  Hanna,  was  clouded  by 
the  sudden  illness  or  death  of  two  old  associates,  both  of  whom 
were  on  their  way  to  Columbus.  One  of  these  men  was  Charles 
Foster,  a  friend  and  ally  of  Mr.  Hanna,  who  had  been  a  Repre- 
sentative in  Congress,  Governor  of  Ohio  from  1880  to  1884, 
and  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  during  President  Harrison's 
administration.  He  had  started  for  Columbus,  stopped  en 
route  to  see  a  friend,  and  died  at  the  friend's  house  of  cerebral 
hemorrhage.  The  other  was  ex-Governor  Asa  Bushnell,  the 
man  who  had  appointed  Mr.  Hanna  to  the  Senate  and  then 
ruined  his  own  career  by  joining  in  the  cabal  which  sought 
to  prevent  Mr.  Hanna's  first  election.  Mr.  Bushnell  was 
visited  by  an  apoplectic  stroke  while  on  the  way  to  the  train. 
A  friend,  who  returned  to  Cleveland  in  Mr.  Hanna's  car,  states 
that  he  was  both  distressed  and  depressed  by  the  coincidence 
of  these  two  deaths.  Only  those  who  knew  him  well  could 
perceive  any  change  in  his  manner;  but  far  from  well  as  he 
was  at  the  time,  he  may  have  felt  the  uncertainty  of  his  own 
life.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  was  an  epidemic  of  typhoid 
at  the  time  of  his  visit  to  Columbus,  and  he  was  there  infected 
with  the  germ  which  caused  his  death. 

Saturday,  January  16,  found  him  back  in  Washington.  He 
went  to  the  Senate  on  Monday  and  Tuesday  and  Wednesday 
mornings.  On  Wednesday  afternoon,  when  Mrs.  Hanna  and 
Miss  Phelps  returned  from  a  drive,  they  found  Mr.  Hanna 
lying  down  in  his  room  at  the  Arlington  Hotel.  He  assured 
them  he  was  all  right,  but  none  the  less  went  to  bed  and  stayed 
there  on  Thursday  and  Friday  and  on  Saturday  until  noon. 
On  Sunday  he  was  up  all  day  until  midnight.  On  Monday, 
January  25,  he  complained  of  a  severe  toothache,  which  during 


*  • 


- 


V 


FACSIMILE  OF  THE  LETTER  WRITTEN  BY  MR.  HANNA  DURING  HIS 
FINAL  ILLNESS  TO  PRESIDENT  ROOSEVELT 


THE  DEATH  OF  MARK  HANNA          453 

the  evening  became  so  bad  that  his  physician,  Dr.  Rixie,  was 
called,  and  morphine  was  administered.  Nevertheless  he 
was  up  the  next  day,  and  enjoyed  very  much  a  visit  from  his 
friend  Mr.  Bliss.  Throughout  the  week  he  was  very  nervous 
and  was  constantly  taking  soothing  or  stimulating  medicine, 
but  he  continued  active,  and  on  Saturday  night  attended  a  dinner 
given  by  the  Gridiron  Club.  On  Sunday,  January  31,  he  had 
Mr.  James  Rhodes,  Mr.  Bliss  and  Mr.  Grant  B.  Schley  for 
breakfast,  and  in  the  afternoon  conferred  with  Mr.  James  J. 
Hill.  He  was  continually  protesting  that  he  was  all  right,  but 
his  hands  were  like  ice.  He  hardly  slept  at  all  that  night  and 
complained  that  every  nerve  in  his  body  ached.  He  was  sick 
Monday  and  Tuesday,  and  on  Wednesday,  February  3,  two 
weeks  after  he  was  first  taken  down,  Dr.  George  Brewer  came  on 
from  New  York  and  diagnosed  his  complaint  as  typhoid  fever. 
In  the  beginning  it  did  not  look  as  if  the  attack  would  necessar- 
ily be  fatal ;  and  probably  it  would  not  have  been  fatal,  in  case 
Mr.  Hanna's  general  condition  had  not  been  so  enfeebled.  He 
continued  for  a  day  or  two  to  transact  some  business  in  bed. 
On  the  afternoon  of  February  5  Mr.  Dover  went  to  Mr.  Hanna's 
room  and  consulted  him  about  some  matters  which  demanded 
the  Senator's  attention.  When  they  had  been  disposed  of, 
Mr.  Dover  told  him  that  President  Roosevelt  had  called  during 
the  morning  in  order  to  inquire  after  his  health.  This  bit  of 
attention  touched  him  deeply,  and  an  hour  after  Mr.  Dover's 
departure  he  called  for  pencil  and  paper  and  scrawled  the 
following  note,  which  perhaps  as  much  as  any  single  utterance 
of  his  life,  reveals  the  quality  of  Mr.  Hanna's  personal  feelings: 

"Mr  DEAR  MR.  PRESIDENT:  — 

"You  touched  a  tender  spot,  old  man,  when  you  called  per- 
sonally to  inquire  after  [me]  this  A.M.  I  may  be  worse,  be- 
fore I  can  be  better,  but  all  the  same  such  "drops  of  kindness" 
are  good  for  a  fellow. 

"Sincerely  yours, 
"  Friday  P.M.  "M.  A.  HANNA." 

The  next  day  a  reply  was  received  from  the  President  accom- 
panied by  a  note  stating  that  it  was  to  be  shown  to  the  Senator 


454      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

when  Mrs.  Hanna  thought  best.     Mr.  Hanna  never  saw  the 
reply  —  which  ran  as  follows :  — 

"Feb.  6,  1904. 
"DEAR  SENATOR:  — 

"Indeed  it  is  your  letter  from  your  sick  bed  which  is  touching, 
not  my  visit.  May  you  soon  be  with  us  again,  old  fellow,  as 
strong  in  body  and  as  vigorous  in  your  leadership  as  ever. 

"Faithfully  yours, 

' '  THEODORE  ROOSEVELT.  ' ' 

About  the  middle  of  the  preceding  week,  during  which  Mr. 
Hanna  had  been  both  in  and  out  of  bed,  he  had  been  carefully 
examined  by  Dr.  William  Osier ;  and  as  soon  as  his  illness  was 
known  to  be  typhoid,  Mrs.  Hanna  wanted  particularly  to  ob- 
tain the  best  counsel  and  assistance.  On  Saturday  Dr.  Brewer 
saw  Dr.  Osier,  who  agreed  to  take  the  case,  but  inasmuch  as 
neither  he  nor  Dr.  Brewer  could  be  in  constant  attendance,  he 
advised  sending  for  still  another  physician,  whom  Mr.  Hanna 
liked,  and  who  could  be  present  all  the  time.  They  telegraphed 
'to  Cleveland,  consequently,  for  Dr.  Edward  Perkins  Carter, 
who  arrived  on  Monday,  February  8,  and  who  with  Dr.  Rixie 
and  Dr.  Osier  constituted  the  physicians  in  charge.  In  the 
meantime  Howard  Melville  Hanna  had  also  been  summoned, 
and  came  at  once.  The  physicians  continued  to  hope  that 
they  could  save  him,  until  Thursday  of  the  same  week.  Dr. 
Osier  had  been  with  him  the  whole  of  the  previous  night,  and 
in  the  morning  was  disturbed  by  his  apathetic  condition.  The 
patient  himself  began  to  lose  courage  and  wanted  to  have  them 
telegraph  for  his  lawyers.  During  the  afternoon,  while  Mrs. 
Hanna  was  sitting  by  his  bedside,  he  seized  her  hand  after  a 
long  period  of  immobility,  and  said,  "Old  lady,  you  and  I  are 
on  the  home-stretch."  She  answered  reassuringly,  but  he  per- 
sisted in  saying  that  he,  at  least,  was  on  the  home-stretch. 
The  next  day,  Friday,  he  was  even  more  discouraged,  and  com- 
plained that  nothing  did  him  any  good.  His  brother  Melville 
was  called  in  to  assure  him  that  he  could  do  more  for  himself 
than  any  one  else  and  that  he  must  fight  on  and  win. 

On  Saturday  he  had  his  first  bad  sinking  spell,  but  rallied 
well  in  the  evening,  and  excited  the  admiration  of  the  doctors 


THE  DEATH  OF  MARK  HANNA  455 

by  the  stiff  fight  which  he  was  making.  On  Sunday,  while 
Mrs.  Hanna  was  in  the  room,  he  seemed  to  be  hunting  for 
something  in  his  pocket.  She  asked  if  he  wanted  a  handker- 
chief. "Yes,"  he  answered,  "I  would  like  one,  but  I  suppose 
I  cannot  have  it.  My  wife  takes  them  all."  Mrs.  Hanna 
frequently  used  his  handkerchiefs,  and  it  was  one  of  his  jokes 
to  accuse  her  of  it  and  ask  her  why  she  did  not  buy  some  of 
her  own.  He  distinguished  all  that  day  the  people  who  were 
with  him,  but  on  Monday  he  was  almost  unconscious.  He  died 
on  Monday  evening,  February  15,  at  forty  minutes  past  six. 

I  have  given  in  detail  an  account  of  Mr.  Hanna's  last  few 
weeks  partly  because  the  story  itself  reveals  more  vividly  than 
could  any  attempt  at  characterization  his  personal  attitude 
towards  his  own  way  of  living.  Had  he  been  willing  to  take 
ordinary  precautions,  he  might  have  survived  many  years; 
but  (be  it  added)  if  he  had  been  willing  to  take  ordinary  pre- 
cautions, he  would  not  have  been  Mark  Hanna.  He  could  not 
allow  scruples  to  interfere  between  himself  and  anything 
which  he  wanted  to  do  and  considered  worth  the  doing.  His 
interest  and  will  were  absolutely  possessed 'by  his  various  ex- 
ternal occupations.  He  was  incapable  of  pausing  and  inquir- 
ing how  far  prudence  would  forbid  him  to  continue  his  exhaust- 
ing career.  His  career  was  himself,  and  if  he  had  hesitated 
or  checked  his  pace,  he  would  have,  to  his  own  mind,  been  play- 
ing the  "  quitter."  The  quality  of  his  will,  which  was  respon- 
sible for  his  peculiar  achievements,  which  impelled  and  enabled 
him  to  nominate  men  for  the  Presidency,  and  to  rise  to  one 
opportunity  after  another  of  useful  service  —  that  same  quality 
kept  him  going  until  his  death.  The  body  of  the  man  and 
the  accidents  of  his  life  were  carried  along  on  a  flood  of  a 
powerful  impulse,  which  did  originate  within  the  field  of  con- 
sciousness, and  which  could  not  be  checked  or  guided  by  con- 
scious motives.  He  was  bound  to  run  until  he  dropped. 

Mr.  Hanna's  family  wished  to  keep  his  funeral  as  quiet  and 
unostentatious  as  they  could,  but  the  sense  of  public  loss  was 
so  acute  and  widespread  that  the  ceremonies  necessarily  be- 
came a  state  affair.  His  associates  in  the  Senate  and  his  friends 
and  neighbors  in  Cleveland  both  demanded  and  had  a  right 
to  give  public  and  formal  expression  to  their  affection  for  Mr. 


456      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

Hanna  and  their  grief  at  his  death.  The  body  was  not,  how- 
ever, allowed  to  lie  in  state  in  Washington.  On  Wednes- 
day, Feb.  17th,  a  memorial  service  was  held  in  the  Senate 
Chamber,  which  was  attended  by  the  President,  the  Cabinet, 
Congress  and  the  whole  official  life  of  Washington,  and  which 
consisted  chiefly  of  an  eloquent  and  impressive  address  of 
the  Chaplain,  the  Rev.  Edward  Everett  Hale.  At  six  o'clock 
on  the  same  day  the  funeral  party  left  for  Cleveland.  At  noon 
on  Thursday  the  body  was  carried  into  the  auditorium  of  the 
Chamber  of  Commerce  in  that  city  by  Governor  Herrick, 
Samuel  Mather,  W.  B.  Sanders,  J.  B.  Zerbe,  Andrew  Squire, 
C.  A.  Grasselli,  A.  B.  Hough  and  W.  J.  McKinnie,  and  the 
same  group  of  friends  served  as  pall-bearers  at  the  funeral  on 
the  following  day.  The  body  lay  in  state  for  twenty-four 
hours,  during  which  more  than  30,000  people  visited  the  bier. 
Friday  was  a  cold,  bleak,  windy  and  snowy  day.  The  funeral 
services  were  held  at  one  o'clock,  at  St.  Paul's  Episcopal  Church, 
and  were  attended  not  merely  by  his  close  connections,  but 
by  an  extraordinary  number  of  distinguished  men  from  all 
over  the  East  and  Middle  West.  Bishop  Leonard  delivered 
the  eulogy.  Mark  Hanna's  sepulchre  is  admirably  situated 
on  the  brow  of  a  high  hill  in  Lakeview  Cemetery  in  Cleveland, 
and  consists  of  a  severely  simple  Greek  temple,  designed  by 
Mr.  Henry  Bacon,  which  makes  an  impression  on  its  visitor 
both  of  beauty  and  solemnity. 

There  was  nothing  perfunctory  in  the  grief  inspired  by  Mark 
Hanna's  death.  Every  one  who  knew  him  felt  his  loss  as  a 
deep  personal  sorrow.  No  man  in  the  country  had  so  many 
friends,  whom  he  had  attached  to  himself  by  services  and  kind- 
nesses small  and  great ;  and  even  those  who  felt  no  grief  them- 
selves could  not  fail  to  be  affected  by  the  sincerity  with  which 
his  associates  mourned  his  death.  "The  most  sorrowful 
scene,"  says  Senator  Spooner,  "which  I  ever  saw  was  in  the 
Senate  when  we  sat  and  waited  for  the  news  of  Mr.  Hanna's 
death.  There  was  a  feeling  in  every  heart  of  personal  bereave- 
ment, and  this  feeling  was,  if  possible,  more  pronounced  on 
the  Democratic  side  -than  on  the  Republican.  But  it  was 
personal  everywhere  and  made  the  moments  we  waited  for 
the  sad  news,  which  we  knew  would  come,  the  most  impressive 


THE  DEATH  OF  MARK  HANNA          457 

in  my  life."  In  his  eulogy  of  Mr.  Hanna,  delivered  in  the 
Senate,  Mr.  Platt  of  Connecticut  said:  "When  Marcus  A. 
Hanna  died  all  the  people  mourned  him  with  a  grief  that  was 
deep  and  unfeigned.  Something  in  his  life  and  character 
endeared  him  to  all  classes.  To  but  few  men  in  this  world 
is  it  given  to  inspire  such  respect  and  affection  as  did  our  de- 
ceased comrade  and  brother.  His  death  saddened  all.  The 
sun  of  life  was  clouded  and  the  whole  air  chill  and  dreary.  It 
seemed  as  if  the  tie  which  bound  his  heart  to  every  heart  had 
been  rudely  sundered.  While  all  shared  the  common  grief, 
nowhere  outside  the  circle  of  his  domestic  life  was  the  mourn- 
ing so  deep  as  among  his  Senatorial  associates.  We  had  learned 
to  admire  him  for  his  ability,  to  respect  him  for  his  strength, 
to  wonder  at  his  great  influence,  but  more  than  that,  each  had 
come  to  love  him  as  a  friend." 

The  foregoing  tribute  to  Mr.  Hanna  was  delivered  by  Mr. 
Platt  in  the  Senate  Chamber  on  April  7,  1904.  Some  sixteen 
Senators  spoke  on  that  occasion,  including  Foraker,  Scott,  Platt, 
Dolliver,  Beveridge,  Blackburn  and  Daniel.  Several  of  the 
speakers,  particularly  the  Democrats,  frankly  admitted  that 
in  their  attitude  towards  Mr.  Hanna  they  had  passed  through 
much  the  same  different  phases  of  opinion  as  had  the  general 
public.  They  had  begun  by  suspecting  him.  Little  by  little 
respect  took  the  place  of  suspicion.  Confidence  was  added  to 
respect,  and  affection  to  confidence.  The  very  men  who  could 
watch  his  public  behavior  most  closely  were  most  completely 
convinced  of  his  good  faith  and  loyalty,  and  they  were  most 
completely  captivated  by  his  warmth  of  feeling  and  his  essen- 
tial humanity.  Thus  it  came  to  pass  that  they  watched  his 
growing  personal  influence  with  wonder,  but  without  envy 
and  without  protest.  The  Senate  is  notoriously  jealous  of 
its  independence,  but  never  was  there  a  suggestion  that  his 
power  was  being  dictatorially  used  or  was  anything  but  the 
natural  and  desirable  fruit  of  his  personal  worth  and  actual 
services. 

In  spite  of  all  that  Mr.  Hanna's  friends  could  say  in  his 
praise  on  that  day  in  April,  it  remained  for  a  man  who  was 
no  longer  his  friend  to  pronounce  the  most  discriminating 
appreciation  of  his  career  and  personality.  Beginning  in  1884, 


458      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

the  whole  of  Mr.  Raima's  public  life  had  been  profoundly 
influenced,  first  by  his  intimacy  with  Senator  Foraker  and  then 
by  their  mutual  alienation.  In  every  crisis  of  Mr.  Raima's 
career  the  threatening  figure  of  Mr.  Foraker  can  be  distinguished 
in  the  foreground  or  the  background,  ready,  wherever  possible, 
to  make  trouble.  On  the  other  hand,  if  any  single  man,  Mr. 
Foraker  himself  excepted,  was  responsible  for  the  abortive 
ending  of  what  promised  in  the  middle  eighties  to  be  an  ex- 
ceptionally brilliant  political  career,  that  man  was  Mark 
Raima.  It  is  the  more  to  Mr.  Foraker's  credit  when,  as  senior 
Senator  from  Ohio,  he  was  called  upon  to  pronounce  in  the 
Senate  the  first  of  a  series  of  tributes  to  Mr.  Raima's  memory, 
that  he  could  without  any  pretence  of  kindly  feeling,  sum  up 
so  honestly  and  fairly  certain  salient  aspects  of  Mr.  Raima's 
achievements  and  disposition.  The  men  who  did  injustice 
to  Mr.  Raima  after  his  death  were  not  his  personal  opponents. 
They  were,  rather,  certain  political  opponents  whose  formulas 
were  so  narrow  and  whose  prejudices  were  so  dense  that  their 
vision  of  the  essential  value  of  the  man  was  obscured  by  their 
disapproval  of  certain  aspects  of  his  work  and  doctrine.  His 
personality  inspired  sympathy  and  respect  among  all  who 
became  acquainted  with  him ;  and  under  favorable  conditions 
the  sympathy  usually  became  affection  and  the  respect  admira- 
tion. His  devotion  to  his  friends  aroused  a  corresponding 
warmth  of  feeling  in  them.  In  a  very  real  sense  he  lived  for 
and  among  other  people. 

He  was  not  merely  fond  of  companionship;  he  was  quite 
dependent  on  it  —  particularly  the  companionship  of  men. 
Throughout  his  life  he  always  liked  to  live,  play  and  eat  in 
the  midst  of  company.  Mrs.  Hanna  never  knew  how  many 
guests  he  would  bring  home  to  dinner ;  but  there  would  almost 
always  be  somebody  —  even  when  he  was  an  obscure  Cleveland 
business  man.  After  his  public  career  began,  this  tireless 
sociability  increased  rather  than  diminished.  Just  as  during 
his  early  life  he  did  his  best  to  bring  to  his  house  all  the  inter- 
esting visitors  to  Cleveland,  particularly  the  actors,  so  after 
he  went  to  Washington,  he  remained  as  curious  about  people 
as  ever,  and  as  much  interested  in  them. 

During  most  of  his  career  as  Senator  he  and  Mrs.  Hanna 


THE   DEATH   OF  MARK  HANNA  459 

lived  at  the  Arlington  Hotel;  but  he  occupied  a  large  suite 
and  practically  kept  house.  His  cook,  Maggie,  was  provided 
with  a  special  kitchen,  which  had  formerly  been  a  bathroom, 
and  in  which  she  provided  for  almost  all  the  meals  of  the  family. 
He  was  constantly  entertaining.  His  Sunday  morning  break- 
fast parties  had  a  special  reputation;  but  his  dinners  were 
scarcely  less  popular.  Whenever  prominent  men,  strangers 
or  not,  registered  at  the  hotel,  Mr.  Hanna  always  managed 
to  meet  them;  and  they  usually  received  an  invitation  to 
dinner.  He  was  not  only  expansive  but  inquisitive.  He 
learned,  not  from  the  printed,  but  from  the  spoken,  word.  He 
acquired  what  Mr.  Foraker  describes  as  his  "  almost  unnatural 
knowledge  of  human  nature"  from  the  zest  with  which  he 
seized  on  every  opportunity  of  getting  in  touch  with  other  men, 
and  from  the  powerful  and  candid  intelligence  which  he  brought 
to  the  digestion  of  this  social  experience. 

Of  course,  he  did  not  seek  companionship  consciously  for  the 
purpose  of  looking  into  the  minds  of  other  men.  He  sought 
it  either  to  transact  business,  to  exchange  ideas  or  merely  to 
have  a  good  time.  His  insight  into  human  nature  was  the 
unconscious  by-product  of  his  sociability.  But  in  any  event, 
he  craved  some  external  occupation  which  was  shared  with 
other  people.  If  nothing  better  offered,  he  would  play  cards. 
During  the  evening,  in  the  absence  of  male  guests,  his  family 
would  have  to  play  with  him,  and  wherever  he  lived  he  collected 
a  group  of  friends,  upon  whom  he  could  usually  depend  for  a 
game  of  whist,  and  later  of  bridge.  In  Washington,  Senators 
Aldrich,  Spooner,  Allison  and  others  were  frequently  found 
at  his  card  table.  In  Cleveland  there  were  a  coterie  of  old 
friends,  including  W.  J.  McKinnie,  A.  B.  Hough,  J.  B.  Zerbe, 
"Jack"  Yates,  E.  P.  Williams,  Frederick  E.  Rittman  and 
others  with  whom  he  habitually  played.  During  the  last 
years  of  his  life,  when  in  Cleveland,  he  spent  a  great  deal  of  his 
time  in  the  Union  Club  at  the  card  table.  He  would  lunch 
there  and  play  all  the  afternoon,  and  on  Saturday  the  whole 
evening  up  to  midnight.  He  never  seemed  to  tire  of  any 
occupation  which  he  thoroughly  enjoyed.  A  small  stake  was 
always  waged  on  these  games. 

Interested  as  he  was  in  his  game  of  whist,  he  never  allowed 


460      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

it  to  degenerate  into  an  unsocial  sport.  He  was  not  one  of 
your  silent  players,  who  are  intent  only  on  winning.  He  talked 
constantly  and  his  friends  say  that  he  talked  more  than  was 
good  for  the  quality  of  his  game.  A  stupid  play  would  be 
pounced  upon  immediately  and  made  the  subject  of  emphatic 
comment.  And  it  was  not  merely  the  incidents  of  the  card 
table  which  he  insisted  on  discussing.  Any  matter  of  local  or 
general  interest  might  come  up  for  comment,  and  he  was  con- 
tinually on  the  lookout  for  a  chance  to  joke  about  the  peccadilloes 
of  his  friends.  There  were  few  of  them  who  escaped  some  kind 
of  rigging. 

Like  most  gregarious  men,  he  liked  to  be  socially  conspicuous. 
He  liked,  that  is,  the  idea  of  being  prominent  and  popular 
among  his  own  people,  and  of  seeing  himself  reflected  large 
in  the  eye  of  the  world.  An  old  friend  states  that  he  enjoyed 
going  to  the  Opera  House,  sitting  in  his  box,  and  being  pointed 
out  as  the  owner  of  the  theatre.  But  this  trait,  hi  so  far  as  it 
existed,  was  an  amiable  weakness.  He  was  entirely  without 
mere  conceit,  and  he  consistently  under-  rather  than  over- valued 
his  own  abilities.  Flattery  had  little  or  no  effect  upon  him. 
He  was  as  little  pleased  with  complimentary  but  exaggerated 
public  tributes  as  he  was  with  his  abundant  portion  of  unjust 
abuse.  But  his  expansive  disposition  craved  approval,  and 
it  was  partly  this  desire  for  approval  which  always  kept  him  so 
closely  in  touch  with  public  opinion.  He  knew  his  own  people 
so  well  that  he  divined  instinctively  what  they  would  approve. 
Strong  as  was  his  individual  will,  it  always  sought  an  expression 
consistent  with  what  he  understood  and  felt  to  be  the  popular 
will. 

Although  he  had  hearty  personal  dislikes  as  well  as  likes, 
he  was  far  from  being  vindictive.  Just  as  his  anger  would 
quickly  cool,  so  a  personal  repulsion  might  easily  be  worn 
down.  His  natural  tendency  was  to  like  other  men,  and  if 
he  continued  to  dislike  them,  it  was  usually  because  he  found 
them  by  experience  personally  untrustworthy.  He  required 
his  associates  to  be,  as  he  was  himself,  fair,  frank,  and  honest. 
He  forgave  anything  in  a  man  quicker  than  a  lie.  When  he 
said,  "That  man  is  a  liar,"  he  was  going  as  far  as  he  could  in 
condemnation.  He  never  deceived  anybody  himself,  and  he 


THE  DEATH  OF  MARK  HANNA          461 

rarely  got  his  own  way  with  people  by  devious  methods.  He 
did  not  promise  to  do  a  thing  unless  he  was  sure  he  could  do 
it;  and  if  he  promised  anything,  it  was  as  good  as  done.  In 
living  up  to  such  standards,  he  was,  of  course,  helped  by  his 
quickness  and  soundness  of  judgment.  When  any  demand 
was  made  upon  him,  he  usually  knew  pretty  well  and  pretty 
soon  how  far  he  could  yield ;  and  he  escaped  in  that  way  en- 
tanglements in  which  other  sympathetic  but  less  sure-footed 
men  are  caught. 

Mr.  Elmer  Dover,  his  private  secretary  for  seven  years, 
states  that  never  during  that  interval  did  he  pass  an  unpleasant 
word  or  an  unkind  criticism.  He  could  be  gruff  and  brusque 
with  importunate  callers,  but  he  was  never  discourteous  to 
people  who  had  any  claim  on  his  time.  He  did  not  find  fault 
with  his  immediate  associates  and  assistants.  Neither  did 
he  praise  them.  He  showed  his  confidence  merely  by  increas- 
ing their  work,  their  responsibility,  and,  if  necessary,  their 
remuneration.  All  his  associates  testify  that  Mr.  Dover  was 
invaluable  to  him,  that  he  imposed  upon  his  secretary  the  most 
delicate  and  onerous  personal  missions  and  negotiations.  But 
he  never  bestowed  upon  Mr.  Dover  any  word  of  commenda- 
tion, except  on  one  occasion  when  a  group  of  friends  were  enter- 
taining Mr.  Dover  at  dinner. 

Mr.  Hanna  did  not  regularly  belong  to  any  church.  When 
a  young  man  he  used  to  attend  church  on  Sundays,  but  later 
in  life  Sunday  became  his  day  of  social  recreation,  during  which 
his  house  was  even  more  full  of  people  than  usual,  and  he 
rarely  heard  a  sermon.  His  disposition  was  obviously  not 
religious  or  devout,  and  he  was  too  sincere  to  pretend  an  interest 
merely  for  public  purposes.  On  the  other  hand,  he  contrib- 
uted freely,  not  merely  to  the  building  funds  of  churches,  but  to 
church  work  and  charity.  His  gifts  were  not  confined  to  any 
denomination  or  to  any  class  of  work.  The  Catholic  Sisters 
received  liberal  assistance,  but  not  less  liberal  were  his  gifts 
to  various  Protestant  institutions  of  all  denominations.  Mr. 
Hanna  was  not  known,  except  within  a  limited  circumfer- 
ence in  Cleveland,  as  a  particularly  charitable  man.  Yet 
throughout  his  life  he  was  a  sedulous  contributor  to  all  kinds 
of  good  causes.  Mr.  Lucius  F.  Mellen,  who  for  twenty-five 


462      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

years  was,  as  he  himself  says,  perhaps  the  sturdiest  beggar  for 
charitable  purposes  in  Cleveland,  states  that  never  once  did 
Mr.  Hanna  turn  him  away  empty-handed.  When  Mr.  Hanna 
had  confidence  in  a  solicitor,  as  he  had  in  Mr.  Mellen,  or  in 
a  Sister  of  Charity,  he  merely  took  out  his  cheque-book  and 
asked  them  how  much  they  wanted.  He  did  not  rub  his  hands 
and  promise  to  have  the  matter  investigated.  He  was  not 
a  scientific  philanthropist.  He  was  simply  a  kind-hearted, 
generous  man,  who  wanted  to  help  people  in  distress,  and  who 
in  helping  them  wanted  to  avoid  ostentation  and  publicity. 
When  during  a  political  campaign  he  made  any  considerable 
donation  to  a  charitable  cause  or  institution,  he  particularly 
requested  that  no  public  announcement  of  it  should  be  made 
until  after  the  election.  He  was  utterly  discomfited  when 
on  one  occasion  during  his  first  stumping  tour,  Mr.  Benjamin 
Butterworth  related  to  the  audience  certain  incidents  which 
illustrated '  his  generous  warmth  of  feeling  towards  other 
people. 

For  the  most  part  his  gifts  consisted  of  small  sums  contrib- 
uted to  needy  causes  or  people.  There  were,  indeed,  one  or 
two  institutions  to  which  he  rendered  systematic  assistance. 
The  Huron  Street  Hospital,  for  instance,  in  Cleveland  received 
from  him  in  all  about  $15,000.  Late  in  life  he  became  inter- 
ested in  Kenyon  College  and  donated  $75,000  as  a  fund  with 
which  to  build  a  dormitory.  But  the  acts  of  generosity,  on 
which  his  friends  liked  to  dwell,  usually  concerned  individuals 
in  whose  need  or  distress  he  happened  to  be  interested. 

Some  of  these  incidents  deserve  to  be  related.  One  rainy 
day  some  time  in  the  early  nineties,  two  Sisters  of  Charity 
called  on  him  for  a  contribution  with  which  to  buy  a  horse. 
Their  horse  had  died  and  they  were  seeking  assistance  to- 
ward the  purchase  of  another.  If  Mr.  Hanna  had  given 
them  $10,  they  would  have  gone  away  well  satisfied.  But 
after  he  had  heard  their  story,  he  pretended  that  he  had  ex- 
hausted his  charity  fund  for  that  month,  and  brusquely  asked 
them  to  return  some  other  time.  Upon  leaving  his  office  they 
were  followed  by  his  coachman,  who  insisted  on  putting  them 
in  a  carriage  and  driving  them  home.  As  they  were  getting 
out,  the  coachman  inquired:  " Where  shall  I  put  the  horse? 


THE   DEATH   OF  MARK  HANNA  463 

Mr.  Hanna  told  me  that  he  had  given  it  to  you."  Another 
case  was  that  of  a  woman  who  had  inherited  a  small  house 
from  her  father.  Times  were  bad.  There  was  a  mortgage 
on  the  property  which  was  being  foreclosed.  A  real  estate 
dealer  went  to  Mr.  Hanna,  knowing  him  to  be  a  shrewd  business 
man,  told  him  that  the  property  could  be  bought  for  less  than 
its  value,  and  asked  for  authority  to  bid  it  in.  Mr.  Hanna  did 
not  know  the  woman,  but  he  was  disgusted  at  the  man's  heart- 
lessness.  He  commissioned  a  lawyer  to  attend  the  sale  and 
buy  the  property.  The  mortgage  was  transferred  to  Mr. 
Hanna  and  was  not  recorded.  Mr.  Hanna  held  the  property 
until  times  improved,  and  then  sold  it  for  a  good  price.  After 
paying  the  mortgage,  the  balance  of  the  money  was  turned  over 
to  the  woman,  who  never  knew  how  near  she  came  to  losing 
her  inheritance,  or  of  Mr.  Hanna's  contribution  to  her  welfare. 

He  was,  of  course,  even  more  generous  with  needy  friends. 
He  would  lend  them  money  on  what  was  often  worthless  secur- 
ity. Mr.  James  Dempsey  was  continually  asked  to  investigate 
such  security,  but  he  was  warned  that  in  any  event  the  loan 
was  to  stand.  He  recalls  many  instances  of  such  loans  which 
were  never  repaid,  and  which  the  lender  never  asked  to  have 
repaid.  After  Mr.  Hanna's  death  his  executors  destroyed  a 
basketful  of  acknowledgments  of  personal  debts.  They  had 
been  accumulating  for  years,  and  no  attempt  had  ever  been 
made  to  collect  them.  Neither  was  this  negligence  due  to  any 
mere  looseness  in  money  matters.  While  not,  of  course,  an 
economical  man,  he  was  conscientious  and  systematic  about 
his  personal  expenditures.  He  knew  how  much  he  was  spending 
and  upon  what  it  was  spent.  He  never  submitted  to  extortion 
and  he  had  a  hatred  of  mere  waste. 

If  he  was  sometimes  lavish  in  his  gifts  and  heedless  about 
his  personal  loans,  it  was  because  such  expenditures  belonged 
to  a  different  class.  In  neither  case  was  he  buying  anything. 
He  was  giving  something  away,  and  he  was  always  giving  with 
it  a  part  of  himself.  The  weightiest  tribute  to  this  aspect  of 
his  nature  comes  from  a  man  whom  he  knew  only  late  in  life, 
and  who  himself  was,  as  Mr.  Hanna  said  of  Mr.  McKinley, 
more  Scotch  than  Irish  in  temperament  —  Senator  Orville 
Platt:  "His  loyalty  was  something  wonderful.  With  his 


464       MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS   LIFE    AND    WORK 

friends,  and  no  man  had  more  friends,  it  carried  him  nearly  to 
extremes.  I  often  thought  that  he  of  all  men  would  be  willing 
to  die  for  his  friends.  Friendship  has  its  burdens  as  well  as  its 
joys,  and  he  took  upon  himself  all  its  burdens  as  easily  and  as 
heartily  as  he  shared  its  joys." 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

CONCLUSION 

A  DISCRIMINATING  estimate  of  Mark  Raima's  public  career 
must  account,  first  of  all,  for  the  apparent  disproportion  be- 
tween what  he  achieved  and  what  he  proposed  or  was  equipped 
to  achieve.  He  had  no  more  training  for  public  life  than  hun- 
dreds of  other  business  men  who  dabbled  in  politics.  His 
own  will,  strong  as  it  was,  and  his  abilities,  exceptional  as  they 
were,  account  for  only  a  certain  portion  of  his  success.  To 
be  sure,  he  willed  and  contrived  the  nomination  of  McKinley, 
just  as  he  willed  and  contrived  many  other  deeds  which  were 
of  decisive  importance  in  his  career.  But  he  did  not  plan  his 
own  political  self-aggrandizement.  Dominant  as  was  his  in- 
stinct for  leadership,  he  never  sought  to  concentrate  in  his 
own  hands  the  various  strings  of  his  personal  power.  Through- 
out his  career  his  effective  influence  gathered  momentum  from 
forces  independent  of  its  original  source  and  of  his  own  con- 
scious purposes.  Like  a  tropical  bamboo,  it  derived  much 
of  its  new  growth  from  shoots  which  were  rooted  in  fresh  soil. 
Both  he  and  his  friends  were  amazed  at  his  own  triumphal 
progress;  and  they  may  well  have  been  amazed,  because  his 
career  was  without  precedent  and  is  not  likely  to  have  any 
imitators. 

Inasmuch  as  Mark  Hanna  was  not  a  usurper  and  his  career 
was  not  a  tour  de  force,  only  one  explanation  will  account  for 
his  peculiar  success.  He  must  have  embodied  in  his  own  life 
and  purposes  some  vital  American  social  and  economic  tradi- 
tion, which  gave  his  personality,  individual  as  it  was,  some- 
thing more  than  an  individual  meaning  and  impulse;  and  he 
must  have  embodied  this  tradition  all  the  more  effectively  be- 
cause he  was  not  more  than  half  conscious  of  it.  Mark  Hanna 
could  not  represent  anything  unless  he  himself  was  what  he 
represented.  In  truth,  Mr.  Hanna  did  embody  the  most  vital 
2n  465 


466      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

social  and  economic  tradition  in  American  history  —  the  tradi- 
tion, that  is,  of  the  pioneer.  He  was  an  incarnation  of  the  spirit 
and  methods  of  the  men  who  seized  and  cleared  the  public 
domain,  developed  its  natural  resources,  started  and  organized 
an  industrial  and  commercial  system  and  determined  most 
of  our  political  and  social  habits  and  forms.  All  the  salient 
characteristics  of  the  pioneer  are  writ  clear  and  large  in  Mr. 
Raima's  disposition  and  achievements.  Indeed,  they  are,  I 
believe,  writ  larger  and  clearer  therein  than  in  any  other  one 
accessible  book.  If  Mark  Hanna  had  not  lived  and  tried  and 
succeeded,  something  might  have  been  permanently  lacking  in 
our  understanding  of  the  spirit  and  methods  of  the  pioneer. 

The  foregoing  assertions  may  well  strike  the  average  reader 
as  doubtful.  How  can  a  man  whose  successful  business  career 
began  after  the  Civil  War  and  who  did  not  become  prominent 
in  politics  until  1896  —  how  can  the  life  of  such  a  man  embody 
with  particular  success  the  spirit  and  methods  of  the  men  who 
conquered  the  American  wilderness?  During  the  culminating 
period  of  his  life  pioneering  in  its  primitive  sense  had  practi- 
cally ceased.  The  wilderness  had  disappeared.  The  United 
States  had  become  more  like  a  European  country  than  like  the 
United  States  of  1830.  The  gulf  which  had  been  created  be- 
tween the  America  of  1830  and  the  America  of  1900  would  be 
fairly  well  measured  by  the  gulf  between  the  manner  of  life 
of  the  lean,  hardy  frontiersman  and  that  of  the  affluent  Cleve- 
land merchant. 

The  difficulty  is  obvious,  but  it  is  not  conclusive.  The  men 
who  originate  an  economic  and  social  impulse  and  start  it  off 
on  a  career  of  conquest  do  not  bestow  upon  it  a  complete  ex- 
pression. They  exhibit  its  fresh  vigor,  and  they  overcome 
the  most  serious  obstacles  in  its  path;  but  their  expression 
of  it  is  necessarily  crude  and  partial.  The  completer  revela- 
tion must  wait  on  history  and  experience.  Generations  must 
pass  before  a  national  social  and  economic  movement  develops 
fully  its  own  latent  tendencies  and  capabilities.  The  primitive 
pioneers  imposed  their  social,  political  and  economic  ideas  upon 
the  country,  but  by  the  time  their  ideas  had  become  part  of  the 
national  tradition,  the  conditions  in  which  they  originated  had 
changed.  After  the  Civil  War  the  pioneer  system  had  to  meet 


CONCLUSION  467 

the  shock  of  new  economic  and  social  forces.  Under  the  stimu- 
lus of  these  new  opportunities  and  new  responsibilities  it  be- 
came in  certain  respects  a  new  system.  The  vitality  of  the 
movement  was  depleted  by  the  effort  to  adapt  itself  to  more 
complicated  social  and  economic  surroundings,  but  this  effort 
and  its  results  proved  to  be  peculiarly  illuminating.  Its  strength 
and  its  weakness  became  more  clearly  distinguishable  and  more 
fully  revealed  than  ever  before,  and  the  hand-writing  of  its 
history  became  far  more  legible.  Inasmuch  as  only  within  the 
past  fifteen  years  has  the  pioneer  been  granted  his  proper  place 
in  American  economic  and  social  development,  it  is  not  un- 
natural that  during  the  same  years  there  flourished  and  died 
the  most  complete  single  embodiment  of  pioneer  purposes  and 
methods. 

The  primary  economic  task  of  the  pioneer  was  that  of  appro- 
priating and  developing  the  land  and  natural  resources  of  a 
continent,  —  a  task  which  combined  and  confused  individual 
and  social  profits.  The  combination  and  confusion  was  re- 
flected in  the  human  nature  of  the  period.  The  early  pioneer 
was  an  aggressive,  energetic,  hopeful,  grasping  individual.  He 
worked  and  fought  primarily  for  his  own  advantage,  but  his 
individualism  did  not  prevent  him  from  being  the  maker  of  a 
society.  In  an  economic  environment  which  provided  oppor- 
tunities for  all,  men  could  fight  for  themselves  without  cherishing 
ill-will  or  incurring  it.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  pioneer  over- 
flowed with  good-will  and  good-fellowship.  He  and  his  neigh- 
bors were  all  striving  for  the  same  port.  Their  contests  were 
merely  a  good-natured  race  for  the  quickest  voyage  and  the 
biggest  market. 

From  the  beginning  they  recognized  and  acted  on  the  theory 
that  the  individual  and  social  profits  were  indistinguishable. 
They  conceived  it  to  be  the  business  of  their  government,  as 
the  agent  of  social  betterment,  to  assist  them  in  attaining  their 
personal  ends.  The  public  interest,  which  government  was 
supposed  to  promote,  was  conceived  chiefly  as  a  collection  of 
individual  interests ;  and  the  way  to  promote  it  was  to  stimu- 
late individual  economic  activity.  Hence  the  passion  for 
"public  improvements"  which  possessed  the  pioneer  states 
and  their  frequent  inability,  in  making  those  improvements, 


468      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

to  distinguish  between  the  really  private  and  the  really  public 
interests  involved.  It  was  during  these  years,  long  before 
corporate  enterprise  had  assumed  economic  importance,  that 
"special  interests"  established  their  control  over  state  legisla- 
tures. It  was  during  these  years  that  the  practice  of  making 
American  business  depend  on  American  politics  had  its  be- 
ginning. 

In  the  meantime  American  business  was  ceasing  to  be  local 
and  was  becoming  increasingly  national  in  its  operations.  As 
it  became  national,  the  successors  of  the  pioneers  began  to  lose 
their  suspicion  of  the  Central  Government.  They  began  to 
understand  that  the  nation  could  contribute  more  effectually 
to  the  stimulation  of  economic  activity  than  could  the  states. 
Stephen  Douglas,  rather  than  a  Whig,  was  the  politician  who 
first  proposed  to  make  land  grants  out  of  the  Public  Domain 
to  a  railroad.  The  Civil  War  accelerated  the  change.  It  split 
the  Democratic  party  and  converted  the  best  of  the  pioneer 
Democrats  into  Republicans,  who  were  ready  to  use  the  powers 
of  the  Central  Government  to  redeem  a  national  responsibility. 
Washington  became  the  headquarters  from  which  was  directed 
a  comprehensive  scheme  of  state-aided  business.  The  agricul- 
tural states  obtained  the  gift  of  free  land  to  homesteaders. 
The  industrial  states  secured  and  kept,  as  their  share  of  the 
bargain,  among  the  several  localities,  a  high  protective  tariff. 
Other  interests  were  satisfied  by  free  mines,  timber  and  pasture. 
The  railroads  claimed  land  grants  as  their  share  of  the  spoil. 
Business  of  all  kinds  was  encouraged  by  loose  corporation  laws. 
In  return  for  all  these  privileges  the  various  special  interests 
were  required  only  to  make  use  of  them.  They  named  their 
own  liquor  and  drank  it  when  and  where  and  how  they  pleased. 
Public  and  private  interests  were  still  conceived  to  be  substan- 
tially identical,  and  the  national  economic  interest  a  compre- 
hensive collection  of  special  interests. 

This  Republican  economic  policy,  to  the  perpetuation  of 
which  the  public  career  of  Mark  Hanna  was  devoted,  is  plainly 
the  adaptation  to  new  conditions  of  the  earlier  purposes  and 
methods  of  the  pioneer  Democrats.  The  continuity  of  the 
tradition  is  unmistakable.  It  consisted  fundamentally  of  an 
attempt  to  convert  the  spirit  and  methods  of  the  pioneer  from 


CONCLUSION  469 

an  agency  of  local  economic  development  into  an  agency  of 
national  economic  development.  The  pioneer  spirit  and 
method,  transformed  in  order  to  meet  larger  opportunities  and 
responsibilities,  was  incorporated  into  the  heart  of  the  national 
economic  system.  In  one  way  or  another  every  kind  of  busi- 
ness was  obtaining  state  aid,  and  was  dependent  upon  state 
policy  for  its  prosperity.  At  the  very  moment  when  both  busi- 
ness and  politics  were  being  modified  by  specialization  and 
organization,  business  itself  was  being  fastened  irretrievably 
to  politics.  And  the  association,  dangerous  as  it  is  both  for 
business  and  politics,  lies  deep  and  ineradicable  in  the  American 
democratic  tradition.  Democracy  has  always  meant  to  Ameri- 
cans a  political  system  which  contributed,  by  whatever  means, 
to  their  individual  economic  well-being.  The  pioneer  economy, 
both  in  its  local  and  national  phases,  was  merely  the  first  at- 
tempt to  realize  this  purpose. 

To  the  generation  of  business  men  who  came  to  the  front 
after  the  Civil  War  and  grew  up  in  the  midst  of  this  system, 
it  seemed  like  the  order  of  nature.  It  assuredly  accomplished 
the  purpose  for  which  it  was  intended,  and  its  success  was  so 
considerable  that  it  was  accepted  as  a  matter  of  course  by  the 
dominant  mass  of  opinion.  Mr.  Hanna  himself  and  many 
others  like  him  was  as  much  of  a  pioneer  in  his  own  region  of 
work  as  had  been  the  men  who  with  axe  and  gun  pushed  their 
way  into  the  wilderness.  He  developed  mines,  discovered  or 
created  markets,  built  furnaces,  improved  mechanical  processes, 
organized  industries  and  started  commercial  currents  on  their 
course.  He  watched  among  his  own  people  the  gradual  accumula- 
tion of  social  benefits  which  resulted  from  the  stimulation  of 
individual  enterprise,  and  these  benefits  seemed  to  him,  not 
the  result  of  temporary  conditions,  but  the  normal  and  perma- 
nent effect  of  stimulating  individual  business  energy.  Neither 
he  nor  the  men  of  his  generation  could  understand  why  the  sys- 
tem should  not  continue  of  equal  benefit  to  the  individual  and 
to  society. 

Nevertheless,  certain  parts  of  this  economic  system  were 
passing  out  of  the  pioneer  stage,  in  which  there  was  a  rough 
approximation  of  individual  and  social  benefits.  The  essential 
character  of  pioneer  economics  consisted  of  an  abundance  of 


470      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

opportunities  due  chiefly  to  a  superfluity  of  accessible  natural 
resources.  But  even  in  a  country  as  richly  endowed  as  the 
United  States,  natural  resources  had  a  limit.  As  soon  as  the 
process  of  their  appropriation  had  reached  a  certain  stage  and 
had  given  their  proprietors  a  certain  advantage  over  their  future 
competitors,  the  machinery  began  to  creak.  Under  such  con- 
ditions the  state  encouragement  of  private  enterprise  assumed 
a  different  appearance  and  began  to  look  less  like  a  system  of 
social  and  more  like  a  system  of  individual  benefits.  Society 
might  profit,  but  not  in  the  same  proportion  to  the  profits 
which  the  state  was  showering  on  the  individual.  In  fact,  the 
balance  of  the  whole  system  was  upset  as  soon  as  natural  re- 
sources became  even  a  little  scarce  and  as  soon  as  the  corre- 
sponding artificial  opportunities,  created  by  state  law,  became 
even  comparatively  inaccessible.  Not  long  after  the  war  pub- 
lic opinion,  in  those  parts  of  the  country  which  were  suffer- 
ing from  local  business  depression,  began  to  blame  the  system 
for  their  privations,  and  began  to  criticise  the  way  in  which 
the  appropriated  economic  power  was  being  exercised.  The 
discontent  increased,  and  thereafter  the  national  policy  of  state- 
stimulated  enterprise  had  to  bear  the  burden  of  hostile  political 
agitation. 

The  foregoing  situation  affords  the  clew  to  the  political  con- 
tests of  the  last  twenty  years.  Just  in  proportion  as  natural 
resources  and  artificial  economic  opportunities  were  appropri- 
ated and  developed,  public  and  private  interests  did  not  coin- 
cide to  the  same  extent  as  formerly.  The  private  interests 
which  had  received  public  assistance  were  driven  by  the  neces- 
sities of  their  position  to  seek  the  continuance  of  this  assistance 
on  other  than  public  grounds.  Business  prosperity  was  en- 
tangled in  a  system  whose  assumptions  no  longer  corresponded 
with  the  facts  of  American  economic  life.  Every  agitation  for 
economic  reform  forced  voters  to  choose  between  alternative 
evils.  They  could  not  withdraw  the  various  privileges  which 
business  had  been  enjoying  without  disturbing  confidence  and 
checking  expansion,  yet  they  could  not  perpetuate  the  advan- 
tages enjoyed  by  certain  kinds  of  business  without  making  the 
state  increasingly  responsible  for  flagrant  economic  inequalities. 
The  man  who  remained  true  to  the  traditional  system  was 


CONCLUSION  471 

obliged  to  countenance  and  overlook  many  grave  political  and 
economic  abuses.  The  man  who  attacked  the  traditional  sys- 
tem was  obliged  to  injure  many  innocent  people,  disappoint 
the  immediate  expectations  of  many  more  for  a  higher  standard 
of  living,  and  launch  his  fellow-countrymen  on  a  career  of  dan- 
gerous economic  and  political  reorganization. 

Mark  Hanna  proved  to  be  the  ablest  and  most  successful 
supporter  of  the  traditional  system  developed  by  the  crisis. 
He  supported  it,  because  he  had  become  accustomed  to  its 
beneficial  effects,  without  being  aware  that  these  benefits  might 
be  diminished  by  the  gradual  intrusion  of  scarcity  values  into 
the  national  economy.  In  his  speeches  he  always  assumed 
that  economic  opportunit  es  were  as  abundant  and  as  accessible 
as  ever,  and  he  always  refers  to  the  country's  natural  resources 
as  inexhaustible.  He  was  quite  sincere  in  failing  to  recognize 
the  change  and  its  consequences,  the  proof  of  his  sincerity  being 
the  harmony  between  the  old  tradition  and  his  own  business 
and  social  habits  and  practices.  Many  of  his  associates  reaped 
their  profits  from  the  pioneer  system,  and  supported  it  by  word 
and  deed,  but  ceased  to  be  the  kind  of  men  in  which  the  system 
originated,  and  which  gave  to  it  its  meaning.  But  Mark  Hanna 
always  remained  a  pioneer,  both  in  his  business  practice  and  in 
his  purposes,  feelings  and  ideas.  His  own  life  embodied  the 
mixture  of  individual  and  social  purposes  characteristic  of  the 
pioneer. 

As  we  have  seen,  he  always  remained  essentially  local  in  his 
business  enterprises  and  ambitions  and  always  had  the  benefit 
of  persistent  and  familiar  social  surroundings.  While  certain 
of  his  friends  were  becoming  specialists  in  financial  and  business 
organization,  he  remained  an  all-round  man,  personally  com- 
petent to  manage  every  aspect  of  his  extensive  and  complicated 
business.  He  was  at  once  salesman,  technician,  financier, 
superintendent,  organizer  and  personal  chief;  and  he  was  all 
these  things  because  he  had  not  hardened  down  into  a  special 
kind  of  a  man.  He  was  every  kind  of  a  man  demanded  by  his 
own  pursuits  and  interests.  Above  all,  he  never  became  that 
special  kind  of  a  man  known  as  a  money-maker.  As  with  the 
pioneer,  business  was  to  him  the  most  interesting  sort  of  life 
provided  by  his  own  society.  It  was  an  intensely  human  occu- 


472      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE  AND   WORK 

pation  in  which  human  motives  were  ever  present,  and  around 
which  he  himself  gathered  a  group  of  essentially  human  values. 

Being  every  kind  of  a  man  demanded  by  his  occupations 
and  interests,  he  inevitably  became  a  politician  as  well  as 
a  business  man.  Personal  participation  in  politics  was  an 
essential  duty  and  joy  of  the  pioneers.  They  associated  in 
their  own  lives  public  and  private  motives  just  as  they  asso- 
ciated public  and  private  interests  in  making  state  policies. 
His  participation  in  politics  was  not  determined  by  business 
motives  any  more  than  his  participation  in  business  was  deter- 
mined exclusively  by  business  motives.  He  took  it  up  because 
it  was  intrinsically  so  interesting,  and  he  became  more  and 
more  absorbed  in  it  because  a  personal  devotion  to  the  careers 
of  certain  political  friends  made  it  finally  much  more  interesting 
than  business.  Of  course  as  a  politician  he  could  not  help 
representing  business,  because  business  was  a  part  of  himself  — 
because  business  was  in  his  eyes  not  simply  money-making, 
but  the  most  necessary  kind  of  social  labor. 

When  the  traditional  system  was  attacked,  his  lifelong 
habits,  associations  and  connections  enabled  him  to  defend  it, 
not  only  with  entire  sincerity,  but  with  abundant  resources. 
He  could  keep  personally  in  touch  with  every  American  interest 
which  would  be  injured  by  the  attack.  He  could  personally  exer- 
cise all  the  qualities  most  needed  for  the  defence.  He  developed 
suddenly  into  an  able  campaign  manager,  who  fought  his  troops 
and  provided  for  their  subsistence  with  unprecedented  skill 
and  energy.  Yet,  if  he  had  been  nothing  but  a  campaign  mana- 
ger, he  would  have  been  far  less  efficient.  The  best  work  he 
performed  for  his  cause  was  that  of  arousing  and  uniting  in  its 
favor  an  obviously  hesitating  public  opinion.  He  brought 
many  of  the  American  people  back  temporarily  to  a  sense  of 
the  value  of  their  traditional  economic  system. 

No  American  political  leader  ever  appealed  to  the  electorate 
so  frankly  as  an  advocate  of  pioneer  economics.  He  asked  his 
audiences  to  vote  for  the  system  under  which  they  and  their 
country  had  become  prosperous  and  which  could  not  be  attacked 
or  modified  without  a  certain  sacrifice  of  prosperity.  He  was 
accused  of  appealing  to  selfish  and  materialistic  motives,  but 
such  derogatory  epithets  meant  nothing  to  him  or  to  his  audi- 


CONCLUSION  473 

ences.  They  knew  that  he  was  seeking  to  satisfy  without 
equivocation  their  deepest  and  most  active  interest  —  the  inter- 
est of  individual  economic  amelioration.  The  American  demo- 
cratic state  had  promised  its  citizens  prosperity  and  comfort 
and  had  recognized  the  responsibility  by  doing  its  best  to  stimu- 
late economic  activity.  He  asked  them  to  continue  the 
same  policy  with  the  expectation  of  reaching  the  same  result, 
and  his  voice  raised  a  responsive  echo  in  their  minds.  They 
would  not  have  listened  to  him  merely  as  the  spokesman  of  the 
New  York  financial  district.  They  did  listen  to  him  as  the 
spokesman  of  American  business,  irrespective  of  size  or  loca- 
tion, and  of  the  individual  and  social  ambitions  with  which 
American  business  had  always  been  associated. 

Political  and  economic  conditions  towards  the  close  of  the 
nineteenth  century  made  it  natural  that  the  pioneer  economic 
system  should  receive  at  that  time  its  final  and  most  candid 
expression.  Prosperity  had  to  be  made  an  issue,  because 
prosperity,  with  all  the  abuses  which  had  become  associated 
with  it  and  with  all  the  individual  and  social  benefits  tradition- 
ally attached  to  it,  was  being  assaulted.  Its  frank  and  vigorous 
defence  by  Mark  Hanna  cleared  the  atmosphere  of  a  great  deal 
of  confusing  cant,  and  helped  public  opinion  to  choose  between 
loyalty  to  the  old  system  and  the  risk  and  danger  of  attempting 
to  substitute  for  it  a  new  system.  As  long  as  Mr.  Hanna  lived, 
the  American  people,  partly  because  of  his  influence,  remained 
true  to  the  old  system.  He  carried  with  him  the  small  traders 
and  proprietors.  After  his  death  this  class  of  small  traders 
and  proprietors,  largely  because  of  Mr.  Roosevelt's  influence, 
switched  to  reform,  and  they  have  remained  ever  since  on  that 
same  track.  Whatever  the  outcome  of  the  attempt  now  being 
made  to  devise  and  establish  a  new  system,  which  will  have 
the  advantages,  without  the  disadvantages,  of  the  old,  the 
traditional  system  has  ceased,  at  least  for  the  time  being,  to 
be  one  on  which  the  American  people  can  unite  for  the  promo- 
tion of  their  joint  economic  interests.  Mark  Banna's  public 
career  coincided  with  the  culmination  of  an  epoch,  and  he  him- 
self was  unquestionably  the  hero  of  this  culminating  moment 
of  a  century  of  American  development. 

The  assertion  that  Mr.  Hanna  constituted  the  most  complete 


474      MARCUS   ALONZO   HANNA,   HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

embodiment  of  the  pioneer  spirit  and  method  may  now  wear 
a  more  plausible  aspect.  He  flourished  at  a  time  when  a  tradi- 
tional system,  which  was  losing  its  vitality  but  retained  much 
of  its  authority,  was  under  pressure.  The  peculiar  mixture  of 
transparency,  candor  and  sincerity  in  his  nature  had  enabled 
him  to  incorporate  the  system  without  distortion  into  his  own 
life.  Under  the  pressure  of  the  attack  and  in  the  ardor  of  his 
defence,  the  meaning  of  the  system,  its  merits  and  defects,  were 
fully  and  clearly  revealed.  For  the  benefit  of  the  cause,  he 
turned  himself  and  his  own  people  inside  out,  and  the  exposure 
threw  a  great  deal  of  light  on  the  whole  process,  which  was  just 
then  reaching  its  culminating  stage.  Many  earlier  aspects  of 
American  pioneerage  can  be  better  understood  when  consid- 
ered in  the  light  of  Mr.  Hanna's  doctrines,  methods  and  achieve- 
ments, while  Mr.  Hanna  himself,  and  what  he  achieved,  remain 
wholly  inexplicable  when  detached  from  their  sources  and  sur- 
roundings. He  added  nothing  to  the  traditional  system,  ex- 
cept some  improvements  in  organization,  and  he  took  nothing 
away  from  it.  He  merely  reflected  it,  and  there  is  much  to 
learn  from  the  reflection. 

Mark  Hanna's  political  method  and  doctrine  were  no  less 
characteristic  of  pioneer  politics  than  his  business  doctrine  and 
methods  were  characteristic  of  pioneer  economics.  The  pio- 
neer Democrats  had  organized  party  government  in  order  to 
supply  an  irresponsible  official  political  system  with  some 
machinery  of  responsible  direction.  The  parties  became  the 
engines  of  government  and  received  recognition  at  the  hands 
of  the  state  to  an  extent  unprecedented  in  previous  political 
history.  The  men  of  Mr.  Hanna's  generation  knew  only  one 
kind  of  responsibility  for  political  action.  Party  organizations 
dictated  candidates  and  platforms,  and  were  supposed  to  guar- 
antee the  acceptability  of  its  nominees  and  the  realization  of  its 
policies.  The  better  party  leaders,  such  as  Mr.  Hanna,  took 
this  responsibility  very  seriously.  £jJnder  Mr.  McKinley's 
leadership  and  his,  the  Republican  party  was  more  than  usually 
successful  in  redeeming  its  promises;  and  its  success  was  due 
to  their  ability  in  drawing  and  keeping  the  party  together. 
They  assumed  power  at  a  moment  when  the  Republicans,  like 
the  Democrats,  had  been  very  much  divided  by  the  intrusion 


CONCLUSION  475 

of  sectional  economic  issues.  They  gradually  converted  it  into 
probably  the  most  efficient  partisan  machine  for  the  transac- 
tion of  political  business  that  had  been  built  up  in  this  country. 

The  cause  of  partisan  harmony  and  efficiency,  like  the  cause 
of  prosperity,  demanded  many  sacrifices.  Mr.  Hanna  himself 
was  willing  to  make  the  needed  sacrifices,  and  he  required  them 
of  his  partisan  associates.  He  labored  unceasingly  in  the  at- 
tempt to  persuade  his  fellow-Republicans  to  abandon  local  in- 
terests, and  personal  feelings  and  ideas  for  the  benefit  of  a  united 
and  harmonious  policy.  He  often  required  sacrifices  which 
conscientious  men  could  not  make.  Under  his  leadership  good 
Republicans  were  asked  to  abandon  protests  against  the  cor- 
ruption and  tyranny  of  the  machine  in  the  interest  of  Republi- 
can success.  But  in  order  to  understand  this  attitude,  we  must 
remember  that  from  his  point  of  view,  the  Republican  party 
was  the  Government.  Revolts  against  the  partisan  organiza- 
tion seemed  to  him  the  result  merely  of  factious  motives.  They 
were  no  more  worthy  of  respect  than  were  the  perverse  class, 
sectional  and  personal  quarrels  which  have  always  constituted 
the  gravest  obstacle  to  the  realization  of  a  really  national  policy. 
They  indicated  a  lack  of  public  spirit. 

Here  again  Mark  Hanna  was  faithfully  representing  an  his- 
torical tradition.  The  party  system,  corrupt  and  tyrannical 
as  it  had  become  in  many  of  its  local  manifestations,  had  been 
forged  to  meet  a  real  need.  It  had  constituted  the  most  power- 
ful of  agencies  for  the  nationalizing  of  public  opinion  in  a  country 
which  was  peculiarly  liable  to  be  distracted  by  local  and  class 
interests,  and  it  had  introduced  some  responsibility  into  an 
irresponsible  official  "  machine."  In  Mark  Hanna's  time  it  con- 
tained and  concealed  many  abuses;  but  it  had  not  for  that 
reason  become  any  less  necessary.  Reforming  legislation 
recognizes  this  necessity  by  incorporating  the  party  systems 
in  the  organization  of  the  state,  and  all  effective  reformers  have 
been  obliged,  in  order  to  accomplish  their  purposes,  to  become 
local  or  national  partisan  managers  and  leaders.  If  Mark 
Hanna  acquiesced  in  and  protected  much  that  was  evil  in  "ma- 
chine" politics,  he  also  brought  out  and  developed  the  real 
responsibilities  and  capabilities  of  the  system.  Under  his 
leadership  the  Republican  party  was  an  effective  engine  of 


476      MARCUS  ALONZO   HANNA,    HIS   LIFE   AND   WORK 

government,  conscious  of  its  duties,  responsive  to  public  opinion 
and  efficient  in  the  exercise  of  its  powers. 

A  careful  analyst  of  American  political  institutions  has  said 
(Henry  Jones  Ford,  "Rise  and  Growth  of  American  Politics,"  p. 
310) :  "  Nowhere  else  in  the  world  at  any  period  has  party  organi- 
zation had  to  cope  with  such  enormous  tasks  as  in  this  country, 
and  its  efficiency  in  dealing  with  them  is  the  true  glory  of  our 
political  system.  .  .  .  The  conclusion  may  be  distasteful,  since 
it  is  the  habit  of  the  times  to  pursue  public  men  with  calumny 
and  detraction ;  but  it  follows  that  when  history  comes  to  reckon 
the  achievements  of  our  age,  great  party  managers  will  receive 
an  appreciation  very  different  from  what  is  now  accorded  them.'7 
If  there  is  any  truth  in  this  prediction,  Mr.  Hanna  will  be  better 
entitled  to  a  revised  judgment  in  his  favor  than  any  of  the  po- 
litical leaders  of  his  own  day.  He  was  the  greatest  and  most 
successful  of  American  party  managers  because  he  brought 
to  the  task  of  party  management  a  peculiar  combination  of 
loyalty  and  adaptability.  The  power  of  a  party  leader  is  en- 
tirely a  matter  of  personal  authority.  It  is  based  on  his  ability 
to  read  correctly  various  phases  of  public  and  private  opinion  ; 
to  be  always  on  the  alert  and  ready  for  any  emergency;  and 
finally  to  understand  other  men,  to  convince  them  and  obtain 
their  confidence.  His  leadership  has  no  definite  term  and  no 
official  sanction.  It  must  be  earned  every  day  or  it  vanishes. 

Mark  Hanna's  personal  authority  was  the  direct  result,  not 
merely  of  his  competence,  not  merely  of  his  reliability,  but 
above  all  of  his  adaptability.  He  introduced  the  phrase  "stand- 
pat"  into  American  politics,  and  "  stand-pattism "  is  usually 
considered  equivalent  to  a  blind  and  rigid  conservatism.  Re- 
formers like  to  talk  about  a  "stand-pat  intellect,"  meaning 
thereby  a  mind  inaccessible  to  the  impact  of  fresh  experiences 
and  ideas.  That  is  precisely  the  kind  of  mind  which  Mark 
Hanna  did  not  possess.  He  was,  of  course,  deeply  attached 
to  certain  traditional  ideas,  but  his  advocacy  of  a  traditional 
system  should  not  obscure  the  essentially  progressive  nature 
and  meaning  of  his  personal  life.  His  salient  quality  as  a  busi- 
ness man  had  been  his  flexibility,  his  enterprise,  his  power  of 
being  every  kind  of  a  man  demanded  by  success  in  his  business. 
His  salient  quality  as  a  political  leader  remained  his  flexibility,  — 


CONCLUSION  477 

his  power  of  being  every  kind  of  a  man  demanded  by  success 
in  politics.  Few  have  been  the  leaders  who  escaped  so  com- 
pletely from  the  limitations  of  their  own  past.  His  career  was 
a  series  of  surprises  and  accumulated  achievements,  because 
he  proved  adequate  to  one  opportunity  and  responsibility  after 
another.  In  the  sphere  of  his  own  proper  personal  work  his 
disposition  was  essentially  adventurous.  He  was  always  under- 
taking new  enterprises  and  assuming  new  duties.  The  limita- 
tions of  his  ideas  were  the  result,  not  of  the  rigidity  of  his  mind, 
but  of  the  limitations  of  his  experience.  That  experience  was 
exclusively  practical  and  was  restricted  by  the  desire  for  imme- 
diate results.  But  within  the  limits  of  a  purely  practical  point 
of  view  he  was  the  most  flexible  of  men;  and  his  flexibility 
was  the  personal  reflection  of  that  social  fluidity  so  characteristic 
of  pioneer  Americanism. 

The  conclusion  is  that  Mr.  Hanna's  personality  and  career 
had  an  essentially  social  value,  which  the  opponents  of  his  po- 
litical and  economic  opinions  should  be  the  last  to  ignore.  He 
gave  a  highly  individual  expression  both  to  the  practical  aspect 
of  pioneer  Americanism  and  to  its  really  underlying  tendency. 
The  aggressive  and  sometimes  unscrupulous  individualism  of 
the  pioneer  was  redeemed  by  the  conviction  that  in  doing  well  for 
himself  he  was  also  doing  well  for  society.  The  pioneer  honestly 
identified  and  confused  individual  and  social  interests,  and  he 
was  honestly  concerned  as  much  for  the  one  as  for  the  other. 
The  society  in  which  he  was  interested  was  not  an  abstract, 
remote  entity.  It  was  a  living  group  of  men  and  women,  whom 
one  liked  or  disliked,  helped  or  hindered,  and  who  aroused  in 
one  another  an  essentially  neighborly  interest.  His  hopes  and 
aspirations  of  a  better  social  state  was  an  extension  of  the  actual 
good-will  which  he  felt  towards  his  associates  individually  and 
as  a  body. 

In  this  region,  also,  Mark  Hanna  helps  us  to  understand  the 
pioneer  American,  and  the  pioneer  helps  us  to  understand  Mark 
Hanna.  Personal  ties  and  associations  composed  the  sub- 
stance of  his  life.  During  each  successive  phase  of  his  career 
he  made  a  few  enemies  and  many  friends.  He  made  enemies 
because  he  had  to  fight  his  way  to  his  goal.  He  made  friends 
because  he  could  make  his  own  the  interests  of  other  men.  He 


478       MARCUS   ALONZO    HANNA,    HIS    LIFE    AND    WORK 

was  building  up  a  better  society  in  his  own  vicinity  by  treating 
his  associates  as  he  would  like  to  be  treated  by  them.  Accord- 
ing to  his  own  lights,  he'always  played  fair — not  merely  towards 
his  friends,  not  merely  towards  his  business  associates  and  em- 
ployees, not  merely  towards  his  political  associates,  but  towards 
his  personal  constituents  and  towards  public  opinion.  This 
spirit  of  fair  play  is  characteristic  of  pioneer  Americanism  and 
constitutes  its  best  legacy  to  a  future  American  society.  But 
characteristic  as  it  was,  it  received  only  occasional  expression 
in  the  lives  of  the  pioneers.  While  their  good-fellowship  and 
good-will  are  indisputable,  their  actual  expression  of  the 
Golden  Rule  was  not  zealous  or  persistent.  They  were  so  eager 
to  make  their  private  fortunes  that  they  were  inclined  to  take 
the  fortune  of  society  for  granted.  They  could  not  rise  to  the 
level  of  personal  disinterestedness  which  the  spirit  of  their 
social  edifice  demanded.  Mark  Hanna's  distinction  is  that  he 
did  rise  to  the  necessary  level  of  personal  disinterestedness. 
He  was  throughout  all  his  business  and  political  relations  what 
the  average  good  American  is  only  in  his  better  moments.  His 
ability  to  give  an  exceptionally  high  expression  to  a  spirit 
which  Americans  traditionally  revere  constitutes  the  secret 
of  his  extraordinary  success.  It  was  by  virtue  of  this  that  his 
personality  inspired  confidence  as  soon  as  it  became  known. 
He  awakened  echoes  among  his  followers,  not  merely  of  their 
traditional  interest  in  economic  self-betterment,  but  of  their 
traditional  spirit  of  social  fair  play. 

The  economic  and  political  system  advocated  by  Mr.  Hanna 
may  not  make  for  social  fair  play ;  but  any  one  who  rejects  the 
system  should  be  the  more  willing  to  recognize  the  good  faith 
of  the  man.  His  personal  behavior  towards  other  men  was 
directed  towards  the  realization  of  those  social  values,  the  pro- 
motion of  which  is  declared  to  be  the  object  of  a  better  system. 
If  he  was  lacking,  as  his  critics  have  declared,  in  idealism,  the 
deficiency  was  at  least  partly  due  to  the  very  reality  of  a  cer- 
tain ideal  element  in  his  own  life.  An  impulse  toward  a  better 
quality  of  human  association  was  instinctive  with  him.  When, 
if  ever,  Mark  Hanna's  way  of  behavior  towards  his  fellows 
becomes  common  instead  of  rare,  we  shall  not  need  so  much 
reform  or  so  many  reformers.  That  so  typical  an  American 


CONCLUSION  479 

should  have  realized  in  his  own  life  such  an  edifying  social 
standard  encourages  the  belief  j  that  reformers  who  aspire  to 
create  a  better  society  are  fighting  on  behalf  of  an  essential 
American  national  instinct. 

In  any  event,  the  value  inherent  in  Mark  Hanna's  example 
and  life  are  durable  —  although  they  are  not  likely  to  be  prized 
at  their  actual  worth  until  greater  harmony  is  restored  between 
national  traditions  and  individual  ideals.  Since  Mr.  Hanna's 
death,  the  trend  of  American  politics  has  been  diverging,  not 
merely  from  his  economic  and  political  system,  but  from  his 
peculiar  emphasis  upon  the  personal  aspect  of  political  rela- 
tions. Politicians  are  coming  to  group  themselves  around  prin- 
ciples and  to  behave  as  if  devotion  to  principle  was  a  sufficient 
excuse  for  a  shabby  treatment  of  political  friends  and  for  fla- 
grant injustice  to  political  opponents.  No  doubt  some  such 
tendency  is  natural  during  a  period  of  changing  conditions  and 
fermenting  ideas  —  in  which  the  call  of  new  convictions  per- 
suades men  to  break  long-established  ties  and  to  repudiate 
time-honored  traditions.  But  reformers  should  not  accept 
the  change  too  complacently.  Human  beings  are  more  real 
than  ideas  or  principles.  Principles  divide  as  well  as  unite. 
They  inspire  doubt  as  well  as  faith.  If  they  are  destined  to 
conquer,  they  must  have  their  militant  and  aggressive  phase, 
yet  while  they  are  militant,  they  are  in  part  untrustworthy. 
They  do  not  become  essentially  trustworthy,  until  they  have 
conquered  and  are  embodied  in  men  to  whom  candor,  fair- 
play  and  loyalty  in  their  personal  relationships  are  of  as  much 
importance  as  devotion  to  principle.  They  do  not  become  es- 
sentially trustworthy,  that  is,  until  they  have  become  human- 
ized. Once  they  have  become  humanized,  their  interpreters 
will  place  a  fairer  estimate  upon  the  representatives  of  an  earlier 
system,  like  Mark  Hanna,  whose  life  realized  so  much  that  was 
characteristic  and  good  in  the  tradition  of  his  own  day  and 
generation. 


INDEX 


Abolitionism,    sympathies    of    Hanna 

family  with,  12. 
Actor  acquaintances  and  friends  of  Mr. 

Hanna,  75. 
Adams,   Charles   Francis,   praises    Mr. 

Hanna's  services  as  director  of  Union 

Pacific  R.  R.,  131  n. 
Aix-les-Bains,    Mr.    Hanna   takes    the 

cure  at,  449. 
Akron  meeting  (1903),  speech  of  Mr. 

Hanna  at,  417. 

Aldrich,  Senator  Nelson,  429,  459. 
Alger,  Russell  A.,  130-131,  180,  194. 
Allison,   Senator,   179,    180,   191,  459; 

President     McKinley's     choice     for 

Vice-President  in  1900,  308. 
Anderson,  A.  T.,  candidate  for  Cleve- 
land postmastership,  154. 
Anderson,     David,    school-teacher    in 

New  Lisbon,  20-22. 
Andrews,  Sherlock  J.,  38,  91. 
Andrews,  W.  W.,  38. 
Anthracite  coal  strike,  of   1900,  389; 

of  1902,  393-400. 
Aristotle,    "Politics"    of,    quoted    on 

intemperate  conduct  of  demagogues 

and  resulting  dangers,  225. 
Arlington      Hotel,      Washington,     the 

Hannas'  home  at,  458-459. 
Armor-plate  question,  the,  285-288. 
Army  service  of  Mr.  Hanna,  44-46. 
Ashtabula,  Ohio,  ore-handling  business 

of  Rhodes  &  Co.  at,  60-61 ;    attacks 

on    Mr.    Hanna   based   on   lease   of 

docks  at,  69. 
Assessment  of  campaign  contributions, 

system  of,  organized  by  Mr.  Hanna, 

219-220,  325-326. 

Bacon,  Henry,  designer  of  Mr.  Hanna's 

sepulchre,  456. 
Baird,  S.  H.,  43. 

Baldwin,  Judge  George  E.,  quoted,  94. 
Baldwin,  Mrs.  S.  Prentiss,  34. 
Bank  (Union    National)   in  Cleveland 

organized  by  Mr.  Hanna,  70-72. 
Banks,  assessment  of,  by  Mr.  Hanna 

for  campaign  funds  (1896),  220. 


Barrett,  Lawrence,  friendship  between 
Mr.  Hanna  and,  75. 

Bartlett,  A.  C.,  389. 

Bayne,  William  M.,  127,  128,  154. 

Beveridge,  Senator,  287,  429,  431,  457. 

Blaine,  James  G.,  defeats  Sherman  for 
nomination  for  the  Presidency,  122- 
124;  dark  horse  at  Convention  of 
1888,  135 ;  mentioned,  151. 

Bliss,  Cornelius  N.,  Treasurer  of 
Republican  National  Committee  in 
campaign  of  1896,  213;  refuses  to 
run  for  Vice-President  in  1900,  308- 
309 ;  quoted  on  Mr.  Hanna's  view 
of  the  Presidential  nomination  for 
1904,  438-439. 

Bone,  J.  H.  A.,  69. 

Bosses,  early  opposition  of  Mr.  Hanna 
to  and  subsequent  cooperation  with, 
114-115;  contest  waged  with,  by 
McKinley  and  Hanna,  in  1895-96, 
177-180;  while  making  use  of,  Mr. 
Hanna  never  joined  the  ranks  of,  188- 
189 ;  victory  in  his  first  Senatorial 
election  due  to  Mr.  Hanna's  differing 
from  the,  265. 

Bourne,  E.  H.,  71 ;  reminiscence  of  Mr. 
Hanna  by,  98. 

Bradbury,  "Billy,"  New  Lisbon  inn- 
keeper, 34-35. 

Brainard,  O.  D.,  quoted,  86. 

Branley,  Assemblyman,  253. 

Brewer,  Dr.  George  E.,  450,  453,  454. 

Bribery,  charge  of,  in  connection  with 
Mr.  Hanna's  Senatorial  campaign, 
259-264. 

Brown,  Bennett,  93. 

Brush,  Charles,  170. 

Bryan,  William  J.,  McKinley  con- 
trasted with,  as  a  speaker,  167 ;  nom- 
ination of,  in  1896,  204,  209 ;  an 
earlier  election  date  would  have 
meant  the  success  of,  209 ;  class  and 
sectional  feelings  aroused  by,  in 
campaign  of  1896,  210-211 ;  reasons 
for  especial  appeal  of,  to  public 
opinion,  210-211 ;  personal  stumping 
tour  by,  214-215;  defeat  of,  by 


2i 


481 


482 


INDEX 


McKinley  by  a  large  majority,  216- 
217;  speaks  in  Ohio  against  Mr. 
Hanna  in  the  Senatorial  campaign, 
247,  249;  the  Democratic  candi- 
date in  1900,  304;  Mr.  Hanna's 
speech  against,  at  Lincoln,  Nebraska, 
338-339 ;  decisive  defeat  of,  by  Mc- 
Kinley (1900),  341. 

Buffalo,  assassination  of  President 
McKinley  at,  358-360. 

Bunau-Varilla,  Philippe,  French  Pan- 
ama Canal  Co.'s  engineer,  381. 

Burke,  Vernon  H.,  253,  254,  260,  288- 
289. 

Burton,  Theodore  E.,  "Life  of  Sher- 
man" by,  quoted,  136,  233;  con- 
troversy between  Mr.  Hanna  and, 
over  Cleveland  postmastership,  154 ; 
works  in  Mr.  Hanna's  interests  in 
Senatorial  campaign,  254;  advises 
President  Roosevelt  on  Ohio  ap- 
pointments, 438. 

Bushnell,  Governor  Asa,  176 ;  reluc- 
tant appointment  by,  of  Mr.  Hanna 
to  Sherman's  former  seat  in  Senate, 
239-241 ;  a  leader  in  conspiracy 
against  Mr.  Hanna  for  Senator,  251 ; 
injures  his  own  political  career  in 
attacking  Mr.  Hanna,  256;  death 
of,  452. 

Butterworth,  Benjamin,  132,  138,  151, 
462;  warm  friendship  of,  for  Mr. 
Hanna,  and  letters  by,  154-156. 

Campaign  contributions,  systematizing 
of,  by  Mr.  Hanna,  219-223,  324-326. 

Campaign  literature,  volume  of,  in 
McKinley's  first  election  (1896), 
217-218. 

Campbell,  James  E.,  and  patent  ballot- 
box  episode,  153. 

Campbell,  Thomas  C.,  259,  262. 

Canals,  development  of,  in  Ohio,  for 
transportation  purposes,  28-29. 

Capital  and  Labor  problem,  Mr. 
Hanna's  interest  in,  386-410. 

Card,  Jonathan  F.,  50. 

Card-playing,  recreation  found  in,  by 
Mr.  Hanna,  459. 

Carnegie,  Andrew,  170. 

Carter,  Dr.  E.  P.,  454. 

Carter,  Thomas  H.,  167,  288,  293. 

Cartoons  of  Mr.  Hanna,  224,  339,  340, 
365,  370. 

Catholics,  political  support  of,  given  to 
Mr.  Hanna,  434. 

Chadwick,  Admiral  F.  E.,  quoted,  237. 

Chandler,    Frank    M.,    letter    of    Mr. 


Hanna  to,  299 ;  advice  given  to,  by 
Mr.  Hanna,  on  selection  of  assist- 
ants, 300. 

Chandler,  Senator,  287. 

Chapin,  George  W.,  46,  51. 

Charities,  extent  of  Mr.  Hanna's,  461- 
463. 

Chautauqua  speeches  on  the  labor 
question  by  Mr.  Hanna,  396-397, 
404. 

Chinese  exclusion  legislation,  373,  374. 

Chisholm,  Henry,  66. 

Chisholm,  William,  170. 

Church,  Mr.  Hanna's  attitude  toward 
the,  461. 

City  of  Superior  steamboat,  40. 

Civic  Federation.  See  National  Civic 
Federation. 

Civil  Service  law,  indifference  shown  by 
Mr.  Hanna  to,  299. 

Clark,  M.  B.,  43. 

Clarke,  John  H.,  Democratic  nominee 
for  Senator  in  1903,  430. 

Clarkson,  Ohio,  founding  of,  3. 

Clarkson,  James  S.,  178,  180. 

Class  feeling  aroused  by  Democrats  in 
election  of  1896,  210-211. 

Clay,  Senator,  tribute  paid  by,  to 
Mr.  Hanna's  power,  343. 

Clayton,  Powell,  123,  214. 

Cleveland,  Ohio,  removal  of  Leonard 
and  Robert  Hanna  to,  32 ;  early 
years  of  the  Hanna  family  in,  36-46 ; 
advantages  of  situation  of,  40,  54-56. 

Cleveland,  Grover,  anti-protectionist 
campaign  of  (1888),  143  ff. ;  effect  on 
McKinley's  prospects  of  defeat  of 
Harrison  by,  167 ;  business  depres- 
sion and  panic  during  administration 
of,  168-169 ;  weakening  of  adminis- 
trations of,  by  mistakes  in  selections 
for  office,  297. 

Cleveland  City  Ry.  Co.,  Mr.  Hanna 
and  the,  77-83. 

Cleveland  Iron  Mining  Company,  59. 

Cleveland  Rolling  Mills  Company,  59. 

Cleveland  Transportation  Company, 
59,  61. 

Coal  miners,  labor  troubles  with,  and 
part  taken  by  Mr.  Hanna  in,  89-95, 
389,  393-400. 

Coal  mining  business  of  Mr.  Hanna's 
firm,  56-57,  62. 

Columbiana  County,  Ohio,  1,  8. 

Commerce  and  Labor,  establishment  of 
Department  of,  373,  374. 

Conciliation  and  Arbitration,  Depart- 
ment of,  of  Civic  Federation,  389 ; 


INDEX 


483 


D.  R.  Hanna  chosen  a  member  of, 
389-390;  interest  of  M.  A.  Hanna 
aroused  in,  390-391 ;  work  of,  in 
connection  with  anthracite  coal 
strike  of  1902,  393-400. 

Conger,  A.  L.,  176. 

Conkling,  Roscoe,  116,  117. 

Connell,  Charles  C.,  historian  of  New 
Lisbon,  22. 

Converse  ancestry  of  M.  A.  Hanna,  5-7. 

Converse,  George  O.,  3  n. 

Converse,  Hattie,  school-teacher,  17, 
19-20. 

Converse,  Helen,  34. 

Converse,  Samantha  (Mrs.  Leonard 
Hanna),  5-7,  17. 

Corbett,  Henry  W.,  277. 

Corporate  interests,  development  of, 
with  Republican  supremacy,  296- 
297;  position  of,  as  an  issue,  in 
McKinley  campaign  of  1900,  305- 
306,  323-327. 

Corruption,  political,  Mr.  Hanna's 
attitude  toward,  80-83;  emphasis 
laid  on  objections  to  use  of  campaign 
funds  for,  by  Mr.  Hanna,  184-185. 

Cortelyou,  George  B.,  359,  360;  con- 
siders that  McKinley  was  an  abler 
politician  than  Mr.  Hanna,  365; 
testifies  to  Mr.  Hanna's  influence 
with  President  Roosevelt,  372 ; 
good  offices  of,  in  preserving  friendly 
relations  between  Hanna  and  Roose- 
velt, 437. 

Cowles,  Edwin,  editor  of  Cleveland 
Leader,  66,  67,  68,  118,  119;  defeats 
Mr.  Hanna  in  election  as  delegate 
to  National  Convention  of  1884,  120- 
121. 

Cox,  George  B.,  129,  176,  252 ;  letters 
from  Mr.  Hanna  to,  294-295,  426. 

Cox,  Peter,  quoted,  86-87. 

Crawford  County  system  of  direct 
primaries,  355-356. 

Cromwell,  William  Nelson,  378. 

Cuban  reciprocity  question,  375. 

Cullom,  Senator,  179,  183. 

Currency  issue,  rise  of  the,  168-169; 
in  Republican  platform  in  1896,  192- 
205 ;  Democrats  take  a  positive 
attitude  toward,  in  Convention  of 
1896,  204-205 ;  settlement  of,  by  the 
56th  Congress,  282. 

Daugherty,  H.  M.,  292,  295. 

Davenport,  Homer,  distorted  impres- 
sions of  Mr.  Hanna  promulgated 
by  cartoons  by,  224,  339,  340,  370. 


Davis,  Senator,  179. 

Dawes,  Charles  G.,  183,  214 ;  work  of, 
in  persuading  Mr.  Hanna  to  ac- 
quiesce in  nomination  of  Roosevelt 
for  Vice-President,  316. 

Debating  club,  New  Lisbon,  23-24. 

Dempsey,  James  H.,  quoted,  104-105  ; 
cited  on  Mr.  Hanna's  ambition  to 
become  Senator,  231-232;  on  Mr. 
Hanna  as  a  public  speaker,  244 ; 
mentioned,  463. 

Depew,  Chauncey,  283. 

Dewstoe,  Charles  C.,  300. 

Dick,  Charles,  166-167,  175,  177,  181 ; 
Secretary  of  Republican  National 
Committee  in  1896,  214 ;  mentioned 
in  connection  with  bribery  charges 
brought  against  Mr.  Hanna,  260, 
289  n. 

Dingley  Law,'  the,  249;  passage  of, 
275 ;  Mr.  Hanna's  contributions  to 
making  of  the,  276. 

Dixon  family,  the,  3. 

Dolliver,  Jonathan,  mentioned  for 
Vice-Presidency  in  1900,  309,  311. 

Dolliver,  Victor,  companion  of  Mr. 
Hanna's  on  speaking  tour  of  North- 
west (1900),  334-335. 

Donaldson,  J.  C.,  state  committeeman, 
161 ;  political  aide  of  Senator  Sher- 
man, 234 ;  correspondence  of,  quoted, 
235-236. 

Dover,  Elmer,  245,  322,  334,  346,  360, 
423,  424,  441,  453;  testimony  of, 
to  even  disposition  of  Mr.  Hanna, 
and  remarks  on  value  of  Mr.  Dover's 
services,  461. 

Droste,  Charles  F.,  253,  254,  256,  258. 

Durbin,  Winfield  T.,  work  of,  in 
campaign  of  1896,  214. 

Easley,  Ralph  M.,  secretary  of  National 
Civic  Federation,  388,  389,  392,  393 ; 
quoted  on  Mr.  Hanna's  work  to 
settle  anthracite  coal  strike,  395. 

Eels,  Dan  P.,  66. 

Ellsler,  John,  72-73. 

Ellwood,  William,  93. 

Employees,  Mr.  Hanna's  relations  with 
his,  86-89,  95,  338,  339,  387-388. 

Engineer,  incident  of  the,  and  Mr. 
Hanna,  in  Nebraska  tour,  337. 

Eshelby,  Edward  O.,  253. 

Europe,  trips  to,  by  Mr.  Hanna,  281, 449. 

Everett,  Sylvester  T.,  6'6,  71,  72,  121. 

Fairbanks,  Charles  M.,  190;  men- 
tioned for  Vice-Presidency  in  1900, 309. 


484 


INDEX 


Filley,  Chauncey  I.,  178. 

Flagler,  H.  M.,  66. 

Fogg,  William  P.,  66. 

Foraker,  James  B.,  at  Convention  of 
1884,  122-124;  close  relations  re- 
sulting from  Convention  of  1884 
between  Mr.  Hanna  and,  124-126; 
election  as  Governor  of  Ohio,  125- 
126;  break  with  Mr.  Hanna,  and 
causes,  128-137;  effect  on  Ohio 
politics  of  enmity  between  Mr. 
Hanna  and,  138-139 ;  growing  ri- 
valry of  McKinley  and,  141-142; 
defeat  of,  for  Governor  in  1889,  152- 
153 ;  the  patent  ballot-box  incident, 
153 ;  defeat  of,  for  Senator  by 
Sherman  in  1891,  158-162 ;  obtains 
victory  over  Mr.  Hanna  and 
Governor  McKinley  in  1895,  176- 
177 ;  supports  McKinley's  candi- 
dacy for  the  nomination  for  Presi- 
dent in  1896,  182;  places  Mc- 
Kinley's name  before  Convention  of 
1896,  191 ;  honor  of  inserting  gold 
clause  in  Republican  platform  of 
1896  claimed  by,  193;  on  Com- 
mittee on  Resolutions  at  St.  Louis, 
195-196;  pamphlet  on  "The  Gold 
Plank"  by,  cited,  202-203;  ques- 
tionable attitude  of,  in  Mr.  Hanna's 
first  Senatorial  campaign,  254;  as 
a  debater  in  the  Senate,  282 ;  takes 
part  in  state  election  of  1901,  357; 
clever  work  of,  in  forcing  Mr.  Hanna 
into  a  corner  on  Roosevelt  issue 
(1903),  423-125;  tries  to  embroil 
relations  between  Roosevelt  and 
Hanna  in  1903,  436;  on  death  of 
Mr.  Hanna,  pronounces  the  most 
discriminating  appreciation  of  his 
career  and  personality,  457-458. 

Ford,  George  H.,  quoted,  38. 

Ford,  Henry  Jones,  work  by,  quoted,  476. 

Foster,  Charles,  118,  132,  138,  165; 
death  of,  452. 

Frazee,  John  N.,  description  of  Lieu- 
tenant Hanna  by,  46. 

Frick,  H.  C.,  170. 

Frye,  Senator,  on  Mr.  Hanna  as  a 
stump  speaker,  248;  with  Mr. 
Hanna  during  speaking  tour  in 
Northwest  (1900),  334-335;  con- 
verted to  the  Panama  route  for 
Isthmian  canal  by  Mr.  Hanna's 
speech  in  Senate,  384. 

Gage,  Lyman  G.,  388. 
Gallinger,  Senator,  284. 


Gardner,  George  W.,  118,  121,  126. 

Garfield,  James  A.,  campaign  of  1880, 
110,  116-117;  succeeded  by  Mc- 
Kinley on  Ways  and  Means  Com- 
mittee, 142;  helped  financially  by 
National  Committee,  160. 

Garfield,  James  R.,  mentioned  in 
connection  with  Mr.  Hanna's  first 
Senatorial  campaign  and  the  charges 
of  attempted  bribery,  253,  258,  260, 
290;  testifies  to  Mr.  Hanna's 
freedom  from  corrupt  methods,  264 ; 
helps  to  maintain  friendly  relations 
between  Hanna  and  Roosevelt, 
437-438. 

Garretson,  Hiram,  32,  36,  43. 

Gary,  James  A.,  appointed  Postmaster- 
General  by  McKinley,  230. 

Gathmann  Torpedo,  the  280-281. 

Gerrard,  Jephtha  A.,  258-259. 

Gessner,  Francis  B.,  newspaper  corre- 
spondent, 267. 

Gleason,  Major,  description  of  Lieuten- 
ant Hanna  by,  46. 

Globe  Ship  Building  Company,  61. 

Goebel,  Judge,  253. 

Gold  plank  in  St.  Louis  platform 
(1896),  192-199. 

Gold  standard,  establishment  of,  by 
the  56th  Congress,  282. 

Gompers,  Samuel,  389,  391,  392. 

Gowdy,  John  K.,  181. 

Grant,  President,  and  James  A.  Gar- 
field,  116-117. 

Grasselli,  C.  A.,  456. 

Gridiron  Club  dinner,  and  tribute 
paid  to  Mr.  Hanna  at,  369-371. 

Griffith,  John  E.,  257,  258. 

Griscom,  Clement,  429. 

Grosvenor,  Charles  H.,  254 ;  interview 
with,  on  Roosevelt's  chances  in 
1904,  423. 

Hahn,  William  M.,  160,  214. 

Hale,  Rev.  Edward  Everett,  memorial 
address  on  Mr.  Hanna  delivered  by, 
456. 

Hale,  Senator,  284,  429. 

Hanna,  Benjamin,  grandfather  of 
M.  A.  Hanna,  2-5,  8-11,  15,  16;  the 
eleven  children  of,  4-5 ;  financial 
ruin  and  death  of,  31-32. 

Hanna,  Daniel  Rhodes,  son  of  M.  A. 
Hanna,  49,  429,  451 ;  a  member  of 
M.  A.  Hanna  &  Co.,  60;  chosen  a 
member  of  Conciliation  and  Arbi- 
tration Committee  of  Civic  Federa- 
tion, 389-390. 


INDEX 


485 


Hanna,  Elizabeth,  ancestor  of  M.  A. 
Hanna,  2. 

Hanna,  H.  Melville,  younger  brother 
of  M.  A.  Hanna,  13,  14,  15,  34,  43 ; 
service  in  navy  during  Civil  War,  44 ; 
buys  M.  A.  Raima's  refinery  and  sells 
out  to  Standard  Oil  Company,  51 ; 
introduction  of  steel  vessels  on  the 
Great  Lakes  by,  61;  quoted,  100; 
on  McKinley's  tact  and  attractive 
personality,  175-176;  with  M.  A. 
Hanna  in  his  last  illness,  454. 

Hanna,  James  B.,  nephew  of  M.  A. 
Hanna,  88. 

Hanna,  Joshua,  uncle  of  M.  A.  Hanna, 
5,  10-11,  12,  32. 

Hanna,  Kersey,  uncle  of  M.  A.  Hanna, 
3  n.,  4,  10,  14,  18. 

Hanna,  L.  G.,  manager  of  Cleveland 
Opera  House,  73. 

Hanna,  Leonard,  father  of  M.  A. 
Hanna,  5-6,  11,  17,  18;  marriage 
to  Samantha  Converse,  6;  takes 
prominent  part  in  temperance  and 
political  movements  in  Ohio,  13-15 ; 
removal  from  New  Lisbon  to  Cleve- 
land, 32 ;  illness  and  death  of,  42. 

Hanna,  Leonard  C.,  brother  of  M.  A. 
Hanna,  41 ;  a  member  of  Rhodes  & 
Co.,  60  n.;  quoted,  85,  101,  102; 
becomes  head  of  M.  A.  Hanna  &  Co. 
on  withdrawal  of  M.  A.  Hanna,  173- 
174. 

Hanna,  Levi,  uncle  of  M.  A.  Hanna, 
3  n.,  11. 

Hanna,  Marcus  Alonzo,  birth  of  (Sept. 
24,  1837),  1,  7;  ancestry,  2-7; 
boyhood  home  and  school  life,  17  ff. ; 
religious  trend  of  father  and  mother, 
18 ;  personal  appearance,  19 ;  activ- 
ities in  debating  club  and  in  mimic 
warfare,  23-27 ;  as  a  leader  among 
boys,  27,  38-39;  removal  with 
parents  to  Cleveland,  32 ;  engage- 
ment to  Mary  Ann  McLain,  32-33 ; 
schooldays  in  Cleveland  and  at 
Western  Reserve  College,  36-39; 
attitude  toward  book  education  and 
education  of  real  life,  39 ;  entrance 
into  business  of  Hanna,  Garretson 
&  Co.  (1857),  39-41;  roustabout, 
purser,  and  commercial  traveller, 
40-41 ;  active  social  life  led  by,  41- 
42;  effect  on,  of  death  of  father 
in  1862,  42-43 ;  a  member  of  firm  of 
Robert  Hanna  &  Co.,  43-44 ;  in  the 
Civil  War,  44-46;  descriptions  of, 
as  a  soldier,  46 ;  love  affair  with  and 


marriage  to  Miss  C.  Augusta 
Rhodes,  47-48 ;  vicissitudes  of  early 
married  Hie,  48-50;  becomes  a 
member  of  firm  of  Rhodes  &  Co.,  50 ; 
refinery  previously  owned  by,  sold 
to  Standard  Oil  Company,  51; 
speculation  on  effects  on  career  of, 
had  he  joined  the  Rockefellers,  51-52 ; 
energies  put  into  Rhodes  &  Co.  make 
him  its  leading  member,  52-53 ; 
success  of  Rhodes  &  Co.  and  M.  A 
Hanna  &  Co.  due  to  nature  of 
management  initiated  by,  63-64; 
business  ventures  outside  of  his 
special  line,  65  ff . ;  experiences  as 
proprietor  of  the  Cleveland  Herald, 
66-70;  false  impression  of  person- 
ality of,  resulting  from  contest 
with  the  Leader,  68;  the  answer 
to  accusation  of  being  a  boss,  70; 
organization  of  Union  National 
Bank  by,  70-72 ;  Cleveland  Opera 
House  purchased  and  managed 
under  direction  of,  72-75 ;  acquaint- 
ance among  actors,  75 ;  street 
railway  affiliations  of,  76-83 ;  atti- 
tude toward  corruption  in  Cleve- 
land politics,  80-83 ;  relation  be- 
tween his  employees  and,  84  ff. ; 
street  railway  men  and,  86-89 ;  ex- 
periences with  labor  difficulties,  89- 
95 ;  generally  broad  and  humane 
treatment  of  employees  by,  95 ; 
characteristics  of,  in  business,  96  ff . ; 
his  initiative,  96-97 ;  capacity  for 
hard  work,  97-98;  success  as  a 
salesman,  98 ;  aptitude  for  me- 
chanics, 98-99  ;  control  of  business 
campaigns  by,  99-101 ;  mixture  of 
balance  and  prudence  in  business 
policy  of,  101-103;  success  as  an 
organizer,  103 ;  absolute  integrity 
the  keystone  of  his  business  struc- 
ture, 103-104 ;  a  shrewd  judge  of 
people,  105-106 ;  manner  in  dealing 
with  business  associates,  106-107; 
can  be  summed  up  as  a  business 
man  who  carried  over  into  the  period 
of  industrial  expansion  the  best 
characteristics  of  the  pioneer,  107- 
108,  465  ff. ;  mistake  of  viewing 
him  as  essentially  a  money-maker, 
108-109 ;  beginnings  as  a  politician, 
110;  interest  in  politics  antedated 
street  railway  connection,  112-113; 
partriotic  motives  at  the  base  of  his 
interest  in  political  matters,  113- 
114;  early  opposition  to  and  subse- 


486 


INDEX 


quent  cooperation  with  the  bosses, 
114-115;  essential  features  of  creed 
of,  regarding  politics,  115;  the 
Garfield  campaign  in  1880,  116-117; 
broadening  of  political  interests  after 
Garfield's  election,  117-118;  mem- 
ber of  state  Republican  committee, 
118;  the  experimental  period  of  his 
political  career,  118-119;  plunge 
into  national  politics  with  election 
as  delegate  to  National  Convention 
of  1884,  120  ff. ;  close  relations 
between  James  B.  Foraker  and,  124- 
126 ;  activities  in  electing  Foraker 
Governor  and  in  Cleveland  munici- 
pal politics,  126-127;  backed  by 
important  business  men  rather  than 
professional  politicians,  127 ;  rup- 
ture between  Foraker  and,  and 
causes,  128-137 ;  constant  support 
of  John  Sherman  for  the  Presidency, 
129-137;  appointed  director  of 
Union  Pacific  R.  R.,  131;  at  the 
National  Convention  of  1888,  133- 
136  ;  permanent  hostility  of  Foraker 
and,  and  effect  on  Mr.  Hanna's 
career  and  on  Ohio  politics,  138-139 ; 
McKinley  definitely  replaces  Sher- 
man in  mind  of,  as  a  Presidential 
possibility,  140-141 ;  increased  in- 
terest in  national  politics  due  to  the 
tariff  issue,  143 ;  as  a  campaign 
fund  contributor  and  successful 
solicitor  of  campaign  contributions, 
145-147 ;  his  assistance  of  Mc- 
Kinley and  Kimberly  in  money  ways, 
146-147 ;  visit  to  Washington  in 
1889  to  help  McKinley's  fight  for 
Speakership,  150 ;  open  hostility 
to  Foraker  in  latter' s  candidacy  for 
Governorship  in  1889,  152-153; 
open  dislike  and  lack  of  recognition 
of,  by  President  Harrison,  153-154 ; 
controversy  with  Congressman 
Burton  over  the  Cleveland  post- 
mastership  154 ;  growing  friend- 
ship with  Sherman,  McKinley,  and 
Butterwortn,  154 ;  letters  of  Butter- 
worth  to,  154-156;  McKinley's 
cautious  letters  to,  156-158;  success- 
ful efforts  by,  to  elect  McKinley  as 
Governor  and  Sherman  as  Senator 
(1891),  158-162;  grateful  letter 
from  Sherman  to,  but  total  neglect 
of  mention  of  in  Sherman's  "Rem- 
iniscences," 162-163 ;  work  for 
McKinley  at  Minneapolis  in  1891, 
165-166 ;  offered  Treasurership  of 


National  Committee  by  Benjamin 
Harrison  but  declines  in  order  to 
leave  hands  free  to  work  for  Mc- 
Kinley (1891),  165;  great  help 
given  to  McKinley  during  latter 's 
financial  ruin,  170 ;  importance  of 
McKinley's  brilliant  reelection  in 
1893  appreciated  by  and  made  full 
use  of,  171 ;  decision  of,  to  with- 
draw from  direction  of  M.  A.  Hanna 
&  Co.  to  give  time  to  politics,  and 
reasons  for  decision,  172-174  ;  rents 
house  in  Georgia  to  help  McKinley's 
cause  in  the  South,  175-176; 
management  of  McKinley's  cam- 
paign for  the  nomination  in  1896, 
175  ff. ;  cost  of  McKinley's  cam- 
paign for  nomination  in  1896 
paid  by,  183-184;  strict  objections 
of,  to  illegitimate  use  of  money  by 
his  lieutenants,  184-185 ;  reasons 
traced  for  success  of  his  ambition 
for  McKinley,  188-189 ;  attitude  of, 
favorable  to  a  gold  standard,  194 ; 
letter  to  A.  K.  McClure  concerning 
St.  Louis  Convention,  198-199; 
recognition  of  services  of,  and  speech 
by,  on  nomination  of  McKinley, 
205 ;  made  Chairman  of  National 
Committee,  206 ;  ovation  to  and 
speeches  by,  on  return  to  Cleveland, 
207-208 ;  masterly  generalship  dis- 
played by,  in  managing  campaign  of 
1896,  209-227 ;  amount  of  money 
raised  by,  for  election  expenses, 
218-221 ;  defence  of  his  methods  of 
meeting  campaign  expenses,  221- 
223  ;  made  the  victim  of  malignant 
personal  attacks,  223-225 ;  popular 
approval  of  and  interest  in,  after 
McKinley's  triumph,  228 ;  declines 
Cabinet  position  (Postmaster-Gen- 
eralship) offered  by  McKinley, 
229-230;  reasons,  230-231;  ambi- 
tion to  become  Senator,  231-232  ;  his- 
tory of  appointment  of,  to  Sherman's 
seat  in  Senate,  232-241;  reason  for 
desirability  of  seeking  election  to 
Senate,  to  preserve  personal  prestige, 
242 ;  story  of  confirmation  of  his 
title  to  Senatorship  by  the  people 
and  Legislature,  242-271;  first 
stump  speaking  by,  243-247;  bri- 
bery charge  against,  259—263 ;  re- 
jection of  corrupt  methods  by, 
263-264  ;  speech  to  supporters  in  the 
Legislature,  266  ;  letter  to  David  K. 
Watson  concerning  attack  on  Stand- 


INDEX 


487 


ard  Oil  Co.  by,  discussed,  266-271 ; 
first  three  years  of,  in  the  Senate 
viewed  as  a  transition  period, 
272  ff. ;  handicapped  by  prominence 
as  a  friend  of  the  President  and  as 
Chairman  of  the  National  Com- 
mittee, 273 ;  work  in  connection 
with  the  Dingley  Law,  275-276; 
committees  on  which  he  served, 
276 ;  attitude  on  public  questions 
as  indicated  by  his  votes,  277 ; 
attitude  on  the  Spanish  War,  278- 
279;  as  an  Imperialist,  279-280; 
his  ship-subsidy  bill,  280,  344  ff. ; 
interest  in  the  Gathmann  Torpedo, 
280-281 ;  votes  against  seating  M. 
S.  Quay,  283 ;  takes  active  part  in 
armor-plate  debate,  286-288;  Sen- 
ator Pettigrew's  attack  on,  and 
Mr.  Hanna's  defence,  288-290; 
part  taken  by,  in  Ohio  politics  in 
1898  and  1899,  291-296;  skill  dis- 
played by,  in  distribution  of  patron- 
age, 297-298;  rules  laid  down  by, 
on  appointments,  299-301 ;  prepa- 
rations of,  for  Convention  of  1900, 
302  ff. ;  the  trust  issue,  305-307; 
opposes  Roosevelt's  nomination  for 
Vice-President,  310;  forced  to  ac- 
quiesce in  the  nomination  of  Roose- 
velt for  Vice-President,  315-317; 
McKinley's  hesitation  in  selecting 
Mr.  Hanna  to  manage  campaign  of 
1900,  320-321 ;  eminent  skill  dis- 
played by,  in  conducting  the  cam- 
paign, on  receiving  appointment  to 
Chairmanship  of  National  Com- 
mittee, 321-322;  irritation  over 
certain  attitudes  taken  by  McKinley, 
329-330 ;  his  stump-speaking  tour 
in  the  Northwest,  331-340 ;  resent- 
ment of,  over  McKinley's  attempted 
interference,  333-334 ;  overwhelm- 
ing success  of  tour,  340 ;  prestige 
of,  after  McKinley's  reelection, 
342-344 ;  ship-subsidy  legislation 
urged  by,  344-354 ;  failure  of,  to 
control  his  party's  politics  in  Cleve- 
land, 355 ;  at  Buffalo  at  time  of  the 
President's  assassination,  358-360 ; 
exchanges  pledges  as  to  mutual 
behavior  with  Roosevelt,  on  death 
of  McKinley,  360-362  ;  comparisons 
and  contrasts  drawn  between  Mc- 
Kinley and,  363-36*8;  change  in 
public  sentiment  toward,  following 
McKinley's  death,  369  ;  the  Gridiron 
Club  dinner  and  address,  369-371 ; 


continued  influence  of,  at  the  White 
House  and  friendship  with  Roose- 
velt, 371-372  ;  takes  part  in  debates 
on  Department  of  Commerce  and 
Labor,  Chinese  Exclusion  Act,  Penn- 
sylvania R.  R.  station  in  Washing- 
ton, Cuban  reciprocity,  etc.,  374- 
375 ;  position  in  the  government 
in  1901-1902  analogous  to  that  of  a 
German  Imperial  Chancellor,  375- 
376 ;  great  importance  of  work  of,  in 
behalf  of  Panama  Canal,  376  ff. ; 
becomes  leader  in  the  Senate  of  pro- 
Panama  route  party,  380 ;  exhaus- 
tive investigation  by,  of  advantages 
and  disadvantages  of  different  canal 
routes,  381-382  ;  speech  of,  in  behalf 
of  Panama  route  (June  5  and  6, 
1902),  382-384;  interest  aroused  in 
capital  and  labor  problem,  386  ff . ; 
publicly  identifies  himself  with 
work  of  National  Civic  Federation, 
391-392;  chairman  of  Industrial 
Department,  Civic  Federation,  391- 
392 ;  work  of,  to  settle  anthracite 
coal  miners'  strike  of  1902,  393-400 ; 
settlement  of  various  labor  disputes 
by,  401-402;  description  of  official  life 
of,  at  Washington,  412-413  ;  proba- 
bility of  election  to  Presidency,  in  case 
McKinley  had  lived,  413  ;  numerous 
advocates  of  Mr.  Hanna's  nomina- 
tion in  1904,  414-415,  416-417,  420 ; 
effect  on  relations  with  Roosevelt  of 
efforts  of  friends  in  behalf  of  nomina- 
tion, 422-423;  cornered  on  Roose- 
velt nomination  question  by  the 
Foraker  faction,  423-425;  indorse- 
ment of,  by  Ohio  state  convention 
of  1903,  429;  celebration  by,  of 
marriage  of  his  daughter  Ruth,  429- 
430 ;  efforts  put  forth  by,  in  state 
election  of  1G03,  430-433;  reelec- 
tion by  a  large  majority  in  1903, 
433 ;  letters  of  congratulation  to, 
from  widespread  sources,  434 ;  re- 
newed efforts  by  supporters  to  boom 
him  for  the  Presidency,  435 ;  sup- 
posed motives  of,  for  not  coming 
out  decisively  for  Roosevelt's  re- 
nomination,  442-444 ;  question  if 
he  could  have  been  persuaded  to 
accept  nomination ;  had  health  per- 
mitted, 444-446 ;  personal  habits 
relative  to  eating,  smoking,  and 
exercise,  447-448 ;  premonitions  of 
physical  breakdown  in  1903,  449- 
450;  visit  to  Europe,  450;  last 


488 


INDEX 


public  utterance,  his  address  to  the 
Legislature  on  being  reflected  to 
Senate,  451-452;  depressed  by 
death  of  Mr.  Foster  and  ex-Governor 
Bushnell,  452;  forced  to  take  to 
his  bed  by  attack  of  typhoid  fever, 
453 ;  last  exchange  of  notes  with 
President  Roosevelt,  453-454  ;  death 
of  (Feb.  15,  1904),  455;  memorial 
and  funeral  services,  455-456 ; 
honest,  fair,  and  discriminating 
appreciation  of  career  and  personal- 
ity of,  pronounced  by  Senator 
Foraker,  457-458 ;  further  descrip- 
tion of  personal  life  and  character- 
istics of,  458-464;  to  be  regarded 
in  the  final  summing-up  as  the  em- 
bodiment of  the  pioneer  spirit, 
whose  conception  of  the  business 
of  the  government  was  to  further 
the  interests  of  individuals,  465- 
471 ;  analysis  in  this  light  of  his 
business  and  political  career,  471- 
477 ;  his  crowning  distinction  his 
spirit  of  fair  play,  his  constancy  to  a 
standard  which  the  average  Ameri- 
can attains  only  in  his  better 
moments,  478 ;  durability  of  the 
value  inherent  in  his  example  and 
in  his  life,  479. 

Hanna,  Robert,  great-grandfather  of 
M.  A.  Hanna,  2-3,  4. 

Hanna,  Robert,  uncle  of  M.  A.  Hanna, 
3  n.,  5,  11;  removal  from  New 
Lisbon  to  Cleveland,  32 ;  mentioned, 
43,  50. 

Hanna,  Ruth,  daughter  of  M.  A. 
Hanna,  34 ;  wedding  of,  423, 429-430. 

Hanna,  Thomas,  ancestor  of  M.  A. 
Hanna,  2. 

Hanna,  Thomas  B.,  uncle  of  M.  A. 
Hanna,  3  n.,  11. 

Hanna  &  Co.,  M.  A.,  succeeds  Rhodes 
&  Co.,  60  n. 

Hanna-Frye  Subsidy  BUI,  280,  345, 
347  ;  failure  of,  353-354. 

Hanna,  Garretson  &  Co.,  firm  of,  36, 
39-40,  43. 

Harbaugh,  Porter,  6. 

Harrison,  Benjamin,  election  of,  as 
President  by  small  margin,  149- 
150 ;  dislike  and  lack  of  recognition 
of  Mr.  Hanna  by,  153-154 ;  nomina- 
tion and  defeat  of,  in  1891-92,  164- 
166 ;  a  possible  rival  of  McKinley's 
in  1896,  177-178,  179,  180 ;  weaken- 
ing of  administration  by  mistakes  in 
selections  for  office,  297. 


Hartz,  Augustus  F.,  73-74. 

Hawley,  Senator,  284. 

Hay,  John,  170 ;  letter  by,  concerning 
Mr.  Hanna,  228. 

Hayes,  Rutherford  B.,  93. 

Hayward,  W.  H.,  45. 

Hearst,  William  R.,  malignant  attacks 
on  Mr.  Hanna  by  yellow  journals 
of,  224. 

Heath,  Perry,  214. 

Hepburn  Bill  relating  to  proposed 
Nicaraguan  Canal,  379-380. 

Herald,  the  Cleveland,  Mr.  Hanna's 
experience  as  publisher  of,  66-70 ; 
use  of,  by  Mr.  Hanna,  in  the  Garfield 
campaign,  117. 

Herrick,  Myron  T.,  132,  192,  456; 
McKinley  aided  by,  when  financially 
ruined,  170 ;  at  St.  Louis  Conven- 
tion, 196-198;  with  Mr  Hanna  in 
Buffalo  at  time  of  President  Mc- 
Kinley's death,  360 ;  interest  of,  in 
Panama  Canal  route,  381 ;  nomina- 
tion of,  for  Governor  in  1903,  428- 
429  ;  great  majority  by  which  elected 
Governor,  433-434. 

Hill,  James  J.,  reminiscence  of  Mr. 
Hanna  by,  105 ;  introduces  Mr. 
Hanna  in  Wall  Street  in  campaign  of 
1896,  219. 

Hitchcock,  Henry  V.,  38. 

Hitchcock,  John  F.,  38. 

Hitchcock,  President  of  Western  Re- 
serve College,  37. 

Hoar,  George  F.,  284;  letter  to  Mr. 
Hanna  from,  431-432. 

Hobart,  Garret  A.,  180,  191-192. 

Hollenbeck,  H.  H.,  260. 

Hord,  A.  C.,  120. 

Hough,  A.  B.,  98,  207,  456,  459. 

Hoyt,  James  H.,  170,  176. 

Hubbell,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Henry  8., 
34. 

Hughes,  Gideon,  2. 

Hunter,  Frank,  88. 

Huntington,  John,  112. 

Imperialism,  acceptance  of  doctrine  of, 
by  McKinley  and  Hanna,  279-280. 

Industrial  Department,  National  Civic 
Federation,  Mr.  Hanna  as  chairman 
of,  391  ff . ;  work  of,  in  anthracite 
coal  strike  and  other  labor  disputes, 
393-402  ;  ultimate  non-success  of,  as 
an  agency  for  settling  labor  troubles, 
407. 

Initiative,  Mr.  Hanna's  salient  charac- 
teristic of,  96-97. 


INDEX 


489 


Ireland,  Archbishop,  a  friend  of  Mr. 

Hanna's,  434. 
Iron-handling  business  of  Mr.  Hanna's 

firm,  57-62. 

James,  John,  secretary  of  Miners' 
National  Association,  quoted,  94-95. 

Johnson,  Tom  L.,  and  Cleveland 
street  railways,  82 ;  first  election 
as  Mayor  of  Cleveland,  355 ;  cam- 
paign of,  throughout  Ohio  in  1902, 
419  ;  defeated  in  state  but  continues 
to  hold  city  of  Cleveland,  420; 
defeated  by  Myron  T.  Herrick  for 
Governor  in  1903,  430-434. 

Johnson,  Willis  Fletcher,  "Four  Cen- 
turies of  the  Panama  Canal"  by, 
quoted,  384. 

Jones,  John  P.,  254. 

Journal,  New  York,  attacks  on  Mr. 
Hanna  by,  224. 

Kean,  Senator,  429. 

Keefe,  Dan  J.,  389,  390,  391. 

Kennedy,  James  H.,  quoted,  117. 

Kenyon  College,  Mr.  Hanna's  address 
at,  247 ;  donation  to,  462. 

Kimberly,  David  H.,  reminiscence  by, 
120-121 ;  election  to  county  treasurer- 
ship,  126-127;  Mr.  Hanna's  finan- 
cial assistance  of,  147-148. 

King,  Rufus,  "Ohio"  by,  quoted,  29. 

Kinney,  Major  Lewis,  founder  of  New 
Lisbon,  Ohio,  1. 

Kittridge,  Senator,  384. 

Knox,  Philander,  170. 

Kohlsaat,  H.  H.,  170,  192;  claims 
responsibility  for  inserting  gold 
clause  in  Republican  platform  of 
1896,  192-193;  at  St.  Louis  Con- 
vention, 196-198. 

Kurtz,  Charles  L.,  176-177 ;  enforced 
retirement  of,  as  Chairman  of  State 
Committee  arouses  his  animos- 
ity against  Mr.  Hanna,  243 ;  a 
leader  in  the  conspiracy  against 
Mr.  Hanna  in  his  first  Senatorial 
election,  251-252. 

Labor  problem,  keen  interest  of  Mr. 

Hanna  in  the,  386  ff. 
Labor  unions,  speeches  and  articles  by 

Mr.   Hanna  on,   404-406 ;    analysis 

of  motives  underlying  Mr.  Hanna's 

treatment  of,  408-410. 
Lac  la  Belle  steamboat,  49,  52. 
Landis,  C.  B.,  332. 
Lauterbach,  Edward,  203. 
Leach,  Charles  F.,  quoted,  110 ;  advice 


on  appointments  given  to,  by  Mr. 
Hanna,  299-300. 

Leader,  the  Cleveland,  war  waged  on 
Mr.  Hanna  and  the  Cleveland 
Herald  by,  66-68 ;  responsibility  of, 
for  grossly  false  impressions  of  Mr. 
Hanna's  character  and  personality, 
68.  See  also  Cowles,  Edwin. 

Leland,  Cyrus,  Jr.,  work  of,  in  cam- 
paign of  1896,  214. 

Leonard,  Bishop,  delivers  eulogy  on 
Mr.  Hanna,  456. 

Leonard  Hanna,  steamboat,  59. 

Letter,  the  historic  Hanna-Watson,  con- 
cerning Standard  Oil  Co.,  266-271. 

Lewis,  Alfred  Henry,  false  and  libellous 
attacks  on  Mr.  Hanna  by,  224-225. 

Lodge,  Henry  Cabot,  190,  192. 

Long,  John  D.,  mentioned  for  Vice- 
Presidency  in  1900,  309,  311. 

Lynchburg,  Va.,  laid  out  by  ancestor 
of  Mr.  Hanna's,  2-3. 

McClure,  A.  K.,  letter  from  Mr. 
Hanna  to,  198-199. 

McClure's  Magazine  article  on  Mr. 
Hanna,  71-72. 

McCook,  Dr.  Henry  G.,  "Threnody" 
on  M.  A.  Hanna  by,  19,  24 ;  descrip- 
tion of  Mark  Hanna  as  a  schoolboy, 
22-23. 

McCook,  General  Anson,  G.,  descrip- 
tion of  New  Lisbon  debating  club 
by,  23-24. 

McCook,  George,  26. 

McCook,  John,  26. 

McCormick,  Joseph  M.,  marriage  of 
Ruth  Hanna  to,  429-430. 

McDougal,  Thomas,  170. 

McKinley,  Abner,  359. 

McKinley,  James,  2. 

McKinley,  Mrs.  William,  Jr.,  devotion 
of  her  husband  to,  363. 

McKinley,  William,  father  of  the  Presi- 
dent, 2. 

McKinley,  William,  Jr.,  2 ;  defence  of 
striking  coal  miners  by,  93-94  ; 
possible  first  meeting  between  Mr. 
Hanna  and,  94 ;  at  National  Con- 
vention of  1884,  122-123;  men- 
tioned, 132 ;  voted  for,  at  National 
Convention  of  1888,  135-136 ;  vital 
effect  on  relations  between  Mr. 
Hanna  and,  of  latter's  rupture  with 
Foraker,  137-138 ;  definite  replacing 
of  Sherman  by,  in  Mr.  Hanna's 
mind,  as  a  Presidential  possibility, 
140-141 ;  increasing  political  rivalry 


490 


INDEX 


of  Foraker  and,  141-142  ;  popularity 
of,  on  account  of  attractive  personal- 
ity and  high  protection  principles, 
142-143 ;  financial  assistance  ren- 
dered to,  by  Mr.  Hanna,  147 ;  de- 
feat of,  in  fight  for  Speakership 
(1889)  and  beneficial  effects  of,  on 
political  career,  150 ;  as  Chairman 
of  Ways  and  Means  Committee 
becomes  responsible  for  new  tariff 
act,  150-151 ;  unites  with  Mr. 
Hanna  in  opposition  to  Foraker  for 
Governor  in  1889,  152-153;  wary 
nature  of,  as  shown  by  correspon- 
dence, 156-158 ;  successful  cam- 
paign of,  for  Governorship  in  1891, 
158-162;  effect  on  Presidential 
ambitions  of  election  to  Governor- 
ship, 164 ;  immediate  steps  taken 
for  nomination  in  1896  after  Con- 
vention of  1891,  166-167 ;  effect  of 
Democratic  victory  of  1892  on 
prospects  of,  167 ;  contrasted  as  a 
public  speaker  with  W.  J.  Bryan, 
167 ;  effect  of  business  depression 
under  Cleveland  on  chances  of, 
168-169 ;  unexpected  bankruptcy 
of,  and  threatened  political  ruin, 
169-170;  ill-fortune  of,  works  to 
his  advantage  in  the  end,  170-171 ; 
reflected  Governor  by  brilliant 
majority  in  1893  and  acclaimed  as 
next  Republican  Presidential  candi- 
date, 170-171 ;  effect  on  candidacy 
for  President  of  passage  of  Wilson 
Bill  and  continued  bad  times  under 
Cleveland,  172-173:  history  of 
campaign  of  1896,  174  ff . ;  the  con- 
test with  Platt,  Quay  and  other 
bosses,  177-180;  cost  of  campaign 
for  nomination  in  1896,  184 ;  free- 
dom of  campaign  from  corruption 
and  preelection  promises  of  political 
rewards,  184—187 ;  success  due  not 
only  to  pleasing  personality  but 
because  he  represented  a  national 
group  of  ideas  and  interests,  187 ; 
vote  cast  for,  in  National  Convention 
of  1896,  191 ;  the  currency  issue 
forced  upon,  in  Republican  plat- 
form, 192-193;  position  of,  on  the 
gold  and  silver  question,  193-195 ; 
the  campaign  of  1896  and  election  of, 
209-227;  receptions  and  speeches 
by,  at  Canton,  to  offset  Bryan's 
personal  stumping  tour,  215—216 ; 
handsome  majority  finally  won  for, 
227 ;  offer  of  Cabinet  position  (Post- 


master-Generalship) to  Mr.  Hanna 
by,  229 ;  history  of  appointment 
of  Sherman  as  Secretary  of  State, 
to  make  room  for  Mr.  Hanna  in  the 
Senate,  232-239;  advice  to  Mr. 
Hanna  before  first  stump-speaking 
tour,  245 ;  administration  embar- 
rassed by  Cuban  question,  273- 
274,  276-277,  278;  credit  due,  for 
success  of  administration  and  united 
support  of  Republican  party  in  1900, 
296-297 ;  change  in  relations  be- 
tween Mr.  Hanna  and,  in  1900, 
owing  to  the  latter's  increasing 
personal  power  and  popularity, 
320-321 ;  correspondence  with  Mr. 
Hanna  concerning  discharge  of 
government  employees  during  the 
campaign,  329-330 ;  his  biographer 
kept  a  good  deal  in  mind  by,  331, 
363-364;  attempts  to  interfere  in 
Mr.  Hanna's  conduct  of  the  cam- 
paign by  trying  to  prevent  the 
latter's  Northwestern  tour,  332-334  ; 
effect  on  cause  of,  of  Mr.  Hanna's 
successful  tour  of  Northwest,  340- 
341 ;  overwhelming  plurality  re- 
ceived by,  341 ;  second  inauguration 
of,  355  ;  assassination  of,  at  Buffalo, 
358-360;  depth  and  strength  of 
Mr.  Hanna's  attachment  to,  362- 
363 ;  a  colder  man  in  disposition 
than  Mr.  Hanna,  363-364;  an 
abler  politician  than  Mr.  Hanna, 
365 ;  Mr.  Hanna's  remarks  on,  at 
unveiling  of  memorial  statue  at 
Toledo,  367. 

McKinley  Bill,  tariff  policy  embodied 
in,  150-151. 

McKinnie,  W.  J.,  456,  459. 

McKisson,  Robert  E.,  in  the  conspir- 
acy against  Mr.  Hanna  for  Senator, 
251 ;  reasons  for  hostility  to  Mr. 
Hanna,  252 ;  nominated  as  anti- 
Hanna  candidate  for  the  Senate, 
255 ;  defeat  of,  259  ;  fails  of  reelection 
as  Mayor  of  Cleveland,  294. 

McLain,  Mary  Ann,  32-33. 

McLean,  John  R.,  unsuccessful  candi- 
date for  the  Senate,  255;  defeated 
in  election  for  Governor  by  George 
K.  Nash,  295-296. 

McMillan,  Reuben,  school  teacher,  23. 

McMillan,  Senator,  284. 

"Maggie,"  the  Hannas'  family  cook, 
447,  459. 

Maine,  blowing  up  of  the,  277,  278. 

Manderson,  General,  181. 


INDEX 


491 


Manhattan  steamboat,  40. 

Manley,  Joseph  H.,  178,  214. 

Mason,  Assemblyman,  253. 

Massillon  coal  district  strike,  89-90, 
92-94. 

Mather,  Samuel,  170,  456. 

Mechanics,  M.  A.  Hanna's  aptitude 
for,  98-99. 

Mellen,  Lucius  F.,  quoted,  98;  on 
Mr.  Hanna's  charities,  461-462. 

Merriam,  William  R.,  150,  180,  192, 
194,  196,  197,  198;  instrumentality 
of,  in  getting  gold  plank  past  the 
Committee  on  Resolutions,  Conven- 
tion of  1896,  202. 

Milburn,  John  G.,  359. 

Minneapolis,  Republican  National 
Convention  of  1892  at,  165-166. 

Mitchell,  John,  389,  391;  mentioned 
in  connection  with  anthracite  strike 
of  1902,  393,  394,  395,  398,  399. 

Moore,  Charles  A.,  392. 

Morgan,  J.  P.,  meeting  of  John 
Mitchell  and,  393. 

Morgan,  Senator,  382. 

Morrow,  James  B.,  67,  235,  263, 
269. 

Morse,  Jay  C.,  46. 

Morse,  Mrs.  Jay  C.,  6. 

Morton,  Levi  P.,  179,  180,  189,  219. 

Mulhern,  George  G.,  77,  86,  87,  88. 

Municipal  corruption,  Mr.  Hanna  and, 
80-83. 

Myers,  Allen  O.,  250-251. 

Myers,  Daniel,  112. 

Nash,  George  K.,  46,  254;  made 
Chairman  of  State  Committee,  243 ; 
elected  Governor  of  Ohio,  294-296 ; 
reflected  Governor  (1901),  356-358. 

Nash,  Samuel  K.,  176. 

National  Civic  Federation,  388  ff . ; 
Mr.  Hanna  publicly  identifies  him- 
self with,  391-392;  failure  of  In- 
dustrial Department  as  an  agency 
for  settling  labor  troubles,  407 ;  defi- 
nite program  of  gradual  develop- 
ment projected  for,  in  Mr.  Hanna's 
mind,  444. 

National  Convention,  of  1884,  120- 
124;  of  1888,  133-136;  of  1892, 
165-166;  of  1896,  190-208;  of 
1900,  302-318. 

National  Magazine  articles,  on  ship- 
subsidy  question,  350;  on  "McKin- 
ley  as  I  knew  Him,"  363;  on  "So- 
cialism and  Labor  Unions,"  404,  405, 
406. 


Nebraska,  tour  of,  by  Mr.  Hanna  in 
1900,  336-340. 

New  Lisbon,  Ohio,  1-2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  8, 
10,  19 ;  ruined  by  mistaken  trans- 
portation policy ;  Mr.  Hanna's  visit 
to,  in  1890,  33-35. 

Newspaper-owning  experience  of  Mr. 
Hanna,  65-70. 

Nicaragua  route  for  isthmian  canal, 
376  ff.,  384-385. 

Northern  Lights  steamboat,  40. 

Odell,  B.  B.,  329,  435. 

Office,  skill  in  selections  for,  displayed 

by    President    McKinley    and    Mr. 

Hanna,  297-298. 
Ohio,  position  of,  in  M.  A.  Hanna's 

young    manhood,    1 ;      stock    from 

which  early  settlers  sprang,  7 ;  effects 

on,    of   introduction   of   canals   and 

railroads,  29-31. 
Ohio  Canal,  the,  29. 
Ohio  Patriot,  The,  10. 
Opera  House,  Cleveland,  ownership  of, 

by  Mr.  Hanna,  72-75,  460. 
Orient  Transportation  Company,  59. 
Osborne,  General,  196. 
Osier,  Dr.  William,  attends  Mr.  Hanna, 

454. 

Otis,  Charles  A.,  112. 
Otis,    John    C.,    253,    254;     story    of 

attempted  bribery  of,  in  Mr.  Hanna's 

first  Senatorial  campaign,  259-264. 

Panama  Canal  legislation,  373,  376  ff. ; 
importance  of  Mr.  Hanna's  work  in 
behalf  of  Panama  route,  376-378, 380, 
381-382 ;  decisive  speech  delivered 
by  Mr.  Hanna  (June  5  and  6,  1902), 
382-384. 

Pankhurst,  J.  F.,  61,  98. 

Parsons,  Richard  C.,  66. 

Patent  ballot-box  episode,  153. 

Patronage,  Mr.  Hanna's  skill  in  dis- 
tribution of,  297-298. 

Patterson,  Raymond,  address  to  Mr. 
Hanna  by,  370-371. 

Payne,  Henry  C.,  180,  192,  196,  197, 
198,  429 ;  work  of,  in  campaign  of 
1896,  214. 

Payne,  Oliver  H.,  urges  nomination 
for  1904  on  Mr.  Hanna,  440-441. 

Pennsylvania  R.  R.  Co.,  relations 
between  Rhodes  &  Co.  and  M.  A. 
Hanna  &  Co.  and,  60-61. 

Penrose,  Senator,  286. 

Perkins,  Senator  Harry  B.,  117,  287. 

Pettigrew,    Senator    Richard    F.,    per- 


492 


INDEX 


sonal  attack  on  and  quarrel  with 
Mr.  Hanna  in  Senate,  288-290; 
Mr.  Hanna's  efforts  to  defeat  for 
reelection,  332-333,  337-338;  loses 
seat  in  election  of  1900,  341. 

Phelps,  Mary,  450,  451,  452. 

Philadelphia,  National  Convention  at, 
in  1900,  302-318. 

Pickands,  James,  170. 

Pioneer  purposes  and  methods  as 
embodied  in  Mr.  Hanna,  107-108, 
465  ff. 

Plain-Dealer,  the  Cleveland,  aggressive 
attitude  of,  toward  Mr.  Hanna,  68. 

Platt,  Orville,  277,  279,  284;  on  Mr. 
Hanna's  Panama  Canal  speech,  384 ; 
letter  by,  on  the  talk  of  nominating 
Mr.  Hanna  for  the  Presidency  in 
1904,  441 ;  eulogy  of  Mr.  Hanna  by, 
in  the  Senate,  457 ;  quoted  on  Mr. 
Hanna's  wonderful  loyalty,  463-464. 

Platt,  Thomas  C.,  178,  179,  180,  189, 
191,  265;  "Autobiography"  of, 
quoted  on  Mr.  Hanna,  180;  asserts 
that  gold  plank  in  St.  Louis  platform 
was  inserted  by  him,  192;  "Auto- 
biography" of,  quoted  concerning 
the  gold  plank,  203  ;  the  nomination 
of  Theodore  Roosevelt  for  Vice- 
President  in  1900,  309,  311-314; 
claim  of,  that  he  persuaded  Mr. 
Hanna  to  acquiesce  in  nomination 
of  Roosevelt  for  Vice-President, 
316. 

Politics,  interest  of  all  citizens  in,  before 
and  immediately  after  the  Civil 
War,  111 ;  Mr.  Hanna's  interest  in, 
shown  to  antedate  his  street  railway 
connection,  112-113;  patriotic  mo- 
tives for  the  pioneer  type  of  man's 
interest  in,  113-114;  essential 
points  of  M.  A.  Hanna's  creed  re- 
garding, 115,  465  ff. ;  Mr.  Hanna's 
standard  of  behavior  in,  not  as  high 
as  in  business,  188-189  ;  total  lack  of 
parallel  to  part  played  by  Mr. 
Hanna  in,  189. 

Polydelphian  Society  of  New  Lisbon, 
23-24. 

Pope,  A.  A.,  170. 

Populism,  speeches  of  Mr.  Hanna's 
dealing  with,  334-340;  death  of, 
in  decisive  victory  of  McKinley  and 
Roosevelt  in  1900,  341. 

Potter,  Bishop,  on  choice  of  Mr. 
Hanna  for  chairman  of  Industrial 
Department,  Civic  Federation,  392. 

Proctor,  Senator  Redfield,  at  St.  Louis 


Convention,  196,  197,  198;  men- 
tioned, 284. 

Protection,  Republican  principle  of, 
and  McKinley's  advocacy  of,  142  ff. ; 
superseded  by  the  currency  issue 
in  the  campaign  of  1896,  192  ff. 

Puerto  Rico  question,  281,  282. 

Quaker  strain  in  Mr.  Hanna's  ances- 
try, 2,  7,  12,  18. 

Quay,  Matthew  S.,  plots  against 
McKinley's  candidacy  in  1896,  178, 
179 ;  shares  in  work  of  campaign, 
214  ;  distinction  between  Mr.  Hanna 
and  politicians  of  type  of,  265 ; 
disputed  Senatorial  seat  of,  277, 
283 ;  Constitutional  question  in- 
volved in  title  of,  to  seat  decided 
in  the  negative,  283-284;  Mr. 
Hanna  incurs  hostility  of,  by 
voting  against,  284-285  ;  discontent 
with  McKinley  regime  shown  by, 
at  Convention  of  1900,  302;  at- 
tempts to  embarrass  the  admin- 
istration by  indorsing  Roosevelt 
for  Vice-President  (1900),  314; 
favors  Roosevelt's  candidacy  at 
time  of  projected  Hanna  boom 
(1903),  435. 

Railroad  alliances  of  M.  A.  Hanna's 
firm,  59-61,  62. 

Rathbone,  E.  G.,  connection  of,  with 
bribery  charge  against  Mr.  Hanna, 
260,  262,  263,  289  n. 

Reed,  T.  B.,  letter  from,  to  McKinley 
on  latter's  election  as  Governor, 
161-162  ;  candidacy  of,  for  nomina- 
tion for  President  in  1896,  177-178, 
179,  180,  182,  190-191. 

Rhodes,  C.  Augusta  (Mrs.  M.  A. 
Hanna),  47. 

Rhodes,  Daniel  P.,  47-53,  56. 

Rhodes,  James  Ford,  a  member  of 
Rhodes  &  Co.,  60  n. ;  mentioned, 
92. 

Rhodes,  Robert  R.,  member  of  Rhodes 
&  Co.,  50,  60  n. ;  quoted,  52,  54,  97. 

Rhodes  &  Co.,  firm  of,  established,  50 ; 
energies  of  M.  A.  Hanna  in  building 
up,  53-54 ;  business  conditions 
favorable  to,  54-56 ;  description  of 
business  of,  56-64 ;  becomes  M.  A. 
Hanna  &  Co.,  60  n. 

Richards,  J.  K.,  177,  195. 

Rittman,  Frederick,  459. 

Rockefeller,  John  D.,  36,  41,  43,  66, 
268. 


INDEX 


493 


Rockefeller,  William,  36. 

Rocky  River  R.  R.,  76. 

Roosevelt,  Alice,  429. 

Roosevelt,  Theodore,  elected  Governor 
of  New  York,  294;  first  proposal 
of,  for  Vice-Presidential  candidate  in 
1900,  309;  urged  by  Thomas  C. 
Platt  but  objected  to  by  McKinley 
and  Hanna,  309-310;  quoted  on 
effort  of  New  York  delegation 
headed  by  Platt  to  force  nomination 
on  him,  311-314;  forces  outside  of 
New  York  which  compelled  him  to 
accept  nomination,  314-317;  unani- 
mous vote  for,  on  first  ballot,  317 ; 
strength  given  to  the  Republican 
ticket  by,  317-318;  speaking  tours 
of,  in  campaign  of  1900,  327-328 ; 
on  the  death  of  President  McKinley 
agrees  to  continue  the  latter's 
policies,  360 ;  Mr.  Hanna's  promise 
to  make  his  administration  a  success, 
361 ;  avails  himself  of  Mr.  Hanna's 
help,  371-372 ;  quoted  on  phases  of 
the  anthracite  coal  strike  of  1902, 
397-400 ;  aspirations  of,  for  nomina- 
tion in  1904,  414^115  ;  continuation 
of  cordial  relations  with  Mr.  Hanna 
in  1902,  415-416 ;  interests  opposed 
to  nomination  of,  in  1904,  420-421 ; 
lack  of  popularity  in  the  South,  421 ; 
Mr.  Hanna's  ugly  dilemma  over 
matter  of  indorsing,  423-426; 
attends  wedding  of  Ruth  Hanna, 
429  ;  efforts  to  nominate  Mr.  Hanna 
against,  435 ;  Mr.  Hanna's  motives 
in  not  coming  out  openly  for  (1903), 
442-444 ;  last  exchange  of  notes 
between  Mr.  Hanna  and,  before 
latter's  death,  453-454. 

Roy,  Andrew,  "History  of  Coal  Mines 
of  United  States"  by,  91. 

Rutan,  D.  L.,  254. 

St.  Louis,  Republican  National  Con- 
vention of  1896  held  at,  190-205. 

Sanders,  Judge  W.  B.,  quoted,  106- 
107 ;  mentioned,  456. 

Sandy  and  Beaver  Canal,  the,  29-31. 

Saunders,  A.  C.,  60  n.,  112;  quoted, 
97,  102-103. 

Schlesinger,  Ferdinand,  100-101. 

Schools  and  school-teachers  at  New 
Lisbon,  19-23. 

Scott,  N.  B.,  214;  correspondence 
between  Mr.  Hanna  and,  439-440. 

Scott,  William  A.,  254. 

Senate,    national,  beginnings    of    Mr. 


Hanna's  career  in,  272  ff. ;  feeling 
in,  at  time  of  his  death,  466-457. 

Shayne,  C.  C.,  262. 

Shelling,  George,  389. 

Sherman,  John,  candidacy  for  nomina- 
tion for  President,  122-124;  Mr. 
Hanna's  support  of,  for  Presidential 
nomination,  129-137 ;  acquaintance 
between  Mr.  Hanna  and,  131 ; 
Foraker's  lukewarmness  toward,  at 
Convention  of  1888,  132-136;  de- 
feat of,  by  Benjamin  Harrison,  134- 
135 ;  replacing  of,  in  Mr.  Hanna's 
mind  by  McKinley  as  a  Presidential 
possibility,  140-141 ;  indorses  Mr. 
Hanna's  recommendations  for  ap- 
pointments which  were  later  turned 
down  by  President  Harrison,  153- 
154  ;  characterization  of,  by  Butter- 
worth,  as  a  fast  and  loose  player, 
155;  desperate  Senatorial  fight 
successfully  carried  through  by  Mr. 
Hanna  (1891),  158-162;  letter  of 
gratitude  by,  to  Mr.  Hanna  but 
neglect  to  mention  name  of  latter 
in  his  "Reminiscences,"  162-163; 
appointed  Secretary  of  State  by  Mc- 
Kinley and  seat  as  Senator  given 
to  Mr.  Hanna  by  appointment  of 
Governor  Bushnell,  233  ff. ;  attitude 
of,  toward  the  President  and  Mr. 
Hanna  when  made  Secretary  of 
State,  233-236;  appointment  of, 
proves  a  mistake,  237-239. 

Ship-building  at  Cleveland,  56. 

Ship-subsidy  legislation  urged  by  Mr. 
Hanna,  280,  344-354. 

Sims,  Charles,  66. 

Sims,  Elias,  76,  79. 

Siney,  John,  91. 

Slavery,  opposition  of  Mr.  Hanna's 
ancestors  to,  12. 

Smith,  Charles  Emory,  333  ;  article  on 
Roosevelt  and  Hanna  by,  quoted,  416. 

Smith,  Joseph  P.,  175,  177. 

Smithnight,  Captain,  128-129. 

South,  skilful  political  work  of  Mr. 
Hanna  in  the,  in  interests  of  Mc- 
Kinley, 175-176,  180  ;  popularity  of 
Mr.  Hanna  in,  as  compared  with 
President  Roosevelt,  421. 

South  Dakota,  Mr.  Hanna's  speech- 
making  tour  of,  334-340 ;  defeat  of 
Pettigrew  in,  341. 

Spanish  War,  the,  274,  276-277;  the 
President  and  Mr.  Hanna's  attitude 
on,  278-279;  effect  of,  on  the  ad- 
ministration's fortunes,  279. 


494 


INDEX 


Spear,  J.  C.,  181. 

Spoils  system  as  administered  by 
McKinley  and  Hanna,  299-301. 

Spooner,  Senator,  284,  287,  353; 
private  testimonial  to  Mr.  Hanna 
from  (1903),  432;  on  effect  of  Mr. 
Hanna's  death  on  the  Senate,  456. 

Spooner  amendment  to  the  Hepburn 
Bill,  382-385. 

Squire,  Andrew,  97,  98,  102,  104,  112, 
254,  456. 

Standard  Oil  Company,  Mr.  Hanna 
and  the,  51-52 ;  contribution  of, 
to  McKinley's  campaign  expenses 
(1896),  220;  letter  from  Mr.  Hanna 
to  David  K.  Watson  concerning, 
and  results,  266-271 ;  contribution 
to  Republican  campaign  fund  in 
1900,  325. 

"Stand-pattism,"  enunciation  of  policy 
of,  by  Mr.  Hanna,  417-419  ;  change 
in  significance  of,  419,  476. 

Steamboats,  effect  of  transportation 
by,  on  development  of  country,  29  ; 
line  of,  established  by  Hanna, 
Garretson  &  Co.,  40 ;  fleet  owned  by 
members  of  Rhodes  &  Co.,  59 ; 
the  first  steel  vessels  on  the  Great 
Lakes,  61. 

Stone,  Amasa,  66. 

Stone,  Melville  E.f  196. 

Straus,  Oscar,  392. 

Street  railways,  history  of  Mr.  Hanna's 
business  connection  with,  76-83 ; 
employees  of,  and  Mr.  Hanna,  86- 
89;  political  capital  for  Tom  John- 
son furnished  by  Mr.  Hanna's 
holdings  in,  355,  419,  420. 

Strikes,  early  experiences  of  Mr.  Hanna 
with,  88-95;  in  plants  of  United 
States  Steel  Corporation  (1901),  391  ; 
of  anthracite  coal  miners  in  1900  and 
in  1902,  389,  393-400. 

Stump  speaking,  Mr.  Hanna's  start  in, 
243-247;  tour  of  Northwest  in 
campaign  of  1900,  331-340. 

Sun,  New  York,  story  concerning 
Roosevelt  and  Hanna,  441-442. 

Surplus,  question  of  reduction  of  the, 
in  campaign  of  1888,  143  ff. 

Taft,  Charles,  helps  in  financial  rescue 

of  McKinley,  170. 
Taft,     President,     administration     of, 

weakened  by  mistakes  in  selections 

for  office,  297. 
Tarbell,  Ida,  "History  of  Standard  Oil 

Company"  by,  267. 


Tariff,  the  main  issue  in  campaign  of 
1888,  143  ff.;  the  McKinley  Bill, 
150-151 ;  bungling  of  Democrats 
in  revising  (Wilson  Bill),  171-172; 
the  Dingley  Law,  249,  275,  276. 

Temperance  movement,  champion- 
ship of,  by  Hanna  family,  12-13. 

Thomas,  E.  B.,  45. 

Thomas,  President,  and  anthracite 
coal  strikers,  390,  393. 

Thomasville,  Ga.,  lease  of  house  at 
and  visits  of  Mr.  Hanna  to,  175- 
176,  281. 

Thurman,  Allen  G.,  133. 

Thurston,  John  M.,  190. 

Tillman,  Senator,  286. 

Todd,  David,  14. 

Transportation,  problem  of,  in  early 
19th  century,  9,  28 ;  solution  of,  by 
steamboats  and  artificial  waterways, 
28-29  ;  the  coming  of  railroads,  31 ; 
revolutionizing  of,  on  Great  Lakes, 
by  introduction  of  steel  vessels, 
61. 

Trusts,  identification  of  growth  of,  with 
Republican  supremacy,  296 ;  as  a 
campaign  issue  in  1900  welcomed  by 
Mr.  Hanna,  305-306,  323-324. 

Tully,  Murray  F.,  402. 

Underground  railroad,  12. 

Union     National     Bank,      Cleveland, 

organization  of,  70-72. 
Union  Pacific  R.  R.,  services  of  Mr. 

Hanna  as  director  of,  131. 
United  States  Steel  Corporation  strike 

(1901),  391. 

Vermont,     origin     of     Mr.     Hanna's 

maternal  ancestry  in,  5-6. 
Voight,  Ohio  State  Senator,  253,  254, 

258. 

Wade,  J.  H.,  66,  170. 

Wade,  Senator  Benjamin,  14. 

Walker  Canal  Commission,  377. 

Wall  Street  and  the  election  of  Mc- 
Kinley in  1896,  219-220. 

Warmington,  George  H.,  member  of 
Rhodes  &  Co.,  50,  60  n.,  93. 

Watson,  David  K.,  story  of  letter  from 
Mr.  Hanna  to,  266-271. 

Waymire,  James  A.,  181. 

Wellington,  Senator,  180. 

Western  Reserve  College,  experiences 
of  young  Hanna  at,  36-39. 

West  Side  Street  Ry.  Co.,  Mr.  Hanna's 
connection  with,  76-83. 


INDEX 


495 


Whist-player,  Mr.  Hanna  as  a,  459- 
460. 

White,  William  Allen,  quoted,  71. 

Williams,  E.  P.,  459. 

Wilson  Bill,  the,  171-172. 

Wolcott,  Edward  O.,  46. 

Woodland  Avenue  and  West  Side 
Street  Ry.  Co.,  77. 

Woodruff,  Timothy,  candidate  for 
Vice-Presidential  nomination  in 
1900,  309,  314;  reported  conversa- 
tion between  Mr.  Hanna  and,  310. 


Yates,  "  Jack,"  459. 

Ydrad  Boat  Club,  41. 

Yellow  journalism,  attacks  of,  on  Mr. 
Hanna,  223-225. 

Young,  Lafayette,  speech  made  by, 
nominating  Mr.  Roosevelt  for  Vice- 
President,  317. 

Zanesville,  State  Convention  at  (1895), 

176-177. 
Zerbe,     J.     B.,     Cleveland     associate 

and  friend  of  Mr.  Banna's,  456,  459. 


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arranged  under  the  following  headings : 

VOL.  I.  Church  and  State,  1829-1894.  —  Ecclesiastical  Patronage  and  Univer- 
sity Reform,  1869-1885.  — The  Oxford  Movement,  1840-1894.  — The  Scottish 
Episcopal  Church,  1858-1862. 

VOL.  II.  Oxford  Elections,  1847-1865. — The  Controversy  with  Rome,  1850- 
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Documents  on  the  State-wide 
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BY  CHARLES   A.  BEARD 

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AND 

BIRL  E.  SHULTZ 

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system  in  ordinary  municipalities  and  commission-governed  cities  have 
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******** 

In  the  introductory  note  Professor  Beard  presents  a  keen  analysis 
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Readings  on  Parties  and  Elections 
in  the  United  States 

BY  CHESTER   LLOYD  JONES 

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As  our  civilization  grows  more  complex  and  our  population  greater,  the  organ- 
ization and  working  of  party  government  becomes  something  in  which  the 
citizen  feels  an  increasing  interest.  Whether  we  welcome  the  change  or  not, 
the  state  plays  a  growing  part  in  our  everyday  lives  ;  many  businesses  formerly 
considered  private  are  subjected  to  control  because  of  the  peculiar  relation  in 
which  they  stand  to  the  public.  The  house  of  the  citizen  is  no  longer  his 
castle  within  which  the  state  may  not  prescribe  the  manner  of  life,  and  a  large 
part  of  our  population  is  no  longer  "  free  "  to  work  where  it  will  and  for  as 
long  as  it  may  please. 

Party  is  the  means  by  which  public  policy  is  determined.  To  have  efficient 
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not control.  Government  of  the  people  is  government  by  party  in  all  modern 
states. 

It  is  to  make  easy  of  access  some  of  the  best  discussions  illustrative  of  the 
development,  present  organization,  abuses  and  remedies  for  the  defects  of  our 
party  government  that  this  book  is  published.  It  is  not  a  source  book ;  indeed, 
the  chief  reliance  has  been  upon  secondary  and  contemporaneous  writing,  but 
it  is  believed  that  the  material  will,  for  this  reason,  have  added  interest  because 
it  deals  with  the  living,  growing  forces  of  the  present  time. 

The  material  of  this  volume,  gathered  by  Professor  Jones  from  all  sources,  is 
invaluable  to  students  of  party  government  in  the  United  States  as  well  as  to 
every  general  reader  and  intelligent  voter.  The  developments  of  the  last  five 
years  in  Party  Organization  and  the  Legal  Control  of  Parties  are  emphasized. 
The  volume  will  prove  an  especially  valuable  supplement  to  such  books  as 
Ostrogorski's  recently  published  "Democracy  and  the  Party  System  in  the 
United  States." 


THE   MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

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LIBRARY,  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  DAVIS 
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2156UO 

E66U 

Croly,  H.D,  H2U 

Marcus  Alonzo  Hanna.     C? 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF   CALIFORNIA 
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